Greg Pease and Craig Tarler, two friends; the light dawns
.Opportunities In Pipe Smoking
- Thread starter WVOldFart
- Start date
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I would've loved to have seem those two working together. I imagine it would've been like the time I saw Bruce Weaver and Werner Mummert working on a pipe together.?Greg Pease and Craig Tarler, two friends; the light dawns
How did you get yourself into the shop? Such talent and artistry! I love Weaver's work. It's amazing how subtle shaping cues can transform a shape that you could love into a shape that you do love.
I like Mummert's work; but for a lover of the classic shapes his free hand with freehands always has a bit of a jar, except for his very angular and lovely bulldogs.
I like Mummert's work; but for a lover of the classic shapes his free hand with freehands always has a bit of a jar, except for his very angular and lovely bulldogs.
Yes ... in some ways, that era was definitely more hospitable to pipe smoking. I don't think I'd feel a lot of nostalgia for the layer of blue haze that you might find in restaurants and other public places, unless it was a haze of pipe smoke ;-). I do remember bars and restaurants with smoking sections.
When I was a novice pipe smoker in my late teens and early 20s, I mostly smoked Amphora, Borkum Riff, and SWR in a reliable Dr. G or Medico because you could buy them just about anywhere (drug stores, supermarkets, convenience stores). I kind of assumed that the mass-market tobaccos and pipes were the extent of what was available. For a kid like me, and on my student budget, those limited choices seemed okay.
Before I left for college, I discovered retail tobacco shops like the Tinder Box, a true revelation. I bought my first quality pipe (a Chacom) and tasted Lane's 1-Q and a Dunhill English for the first time right before my freshman year of college. The availability of higher-quality pipes along with good bulk and tinned blends at a decent price kind of stunned me by elevating the pleasure of pipe smoking several notches.
I certainly recall when pipe smoking was "accepted, considered normal" - definitely not socially stigmatized. At my university (like pretty much everywhere else in the 80s and early 90s), you could smoke in most public spaces, except for classrooms. At first, I felt a little self-conscious lighting a pipe aon campus, but I got comfortable with it pretty soon, as quite a few professors and students smoked pipes. My friends, parents, and family were hardly surprised when I came home smoking a pipe. Most people thought it was the most natural thing. The freedom to enjoy pipes and tobaccos is quite a bit harder to find these days ... :-\
I can only imagine how good it would have been walking into a Tobacconist shop in England a hundred years ago.
Gawith Hoggarth and Samuel Gawith blends are all over 100 years old, those shops would have been stocked floor to ceiling with dark plugs in every imaginable variety, ready to smoke on the spot.
When I was a child in the 1960's the tobacco shop was as good as smelling the freshly ground coffee at the A & P Store. The tobacco shop had all these wonderful blends, plus cigars, cigarettes and people were all smoking their pleasure while in the store. Now, that is a fragrance. Cigar and pipe smoke mingled with cigarette smoke was something to behold. My grandmother enjoyed the smell of cigar smoke so much that she would retrieve the cigar butts out of the ash tray and light them so they would smolder and may incense for her.
I don't think you can! I'm daydreaming just sitting here reading it! The only downsides is that 40 years ago was 1981 and some 70's fashions were still clinging in there.
To have lived at a time when smoking was not just tolerated but understood to be.... normal.... and to have lived during a time when pipe shops were plentiful, smoking after a meal was normal in public, and when it was even considered appropriate to ask the local hunchback to come back in ten minutes so you could strike a match on his suspenders because you enjoyed smoking your pipe after dinner --- to have lived when all of that was par for the course --- how does one not treasure those days.
(A Few Dollars More reference tossed in for fun)
(A Few Dollars More reference tossed in for fun)
I was born in 1980... tobacco was certainly hard to get back then.. my momma kept taking the pipe out of my mouth and replacing it with her booby. Nourishment, who needs it?
But honestly, I kind of wish I lived back in the day where I was just subject to whatever my local tobacconist had, beats longing for tobacco overseas. I mean, I'm done with the longing part but those foreign tobaccos sure did hit the budget hard there for awhile... Revor, Warrior, Condor ain't cheap to import. Though now that I think of it, wasn't Condor available here in the 80's?
But honestly, I kind of wish I lived back in the day where I was just subject to whatever my local tobacconist had, beats longing for tobacco overseas. I mean, I'm done with the longing part but those foreign tobaccos sure did hit the budget hard there for awhile... Revor, Warrior, Condor ain't cheap to import. Though now that I think of it, wasn't Condor available here in the 80's?