Regarding the Coloring of Algerian Briar

[Briar Lee]

I’m such a leather tongued old pipe addict I don’t own a single light tan unsmoked Algerian briar pipe to illustrate the color of a new one.

Here is how they came new:



I love how the more I smoke a Marxman (or any other Pre 54 Algerian briar pipe) the darker and more reddish brown they get.




It may be that all of the coloring is external, from oil on your hands, or from the atmosphere. I know they’ll soak up grapeseed oil like a sponge, and darken from it.

But they’ll also color, I swear, while I smoke one. At the end of smoking a fresh Marxman it’s a visible shade darker, and all over the stummel , not just where I handle it. The more I smoke one the darker they get, until they are nearly black.

I don’t own any, but in the day Kaywoodie used to advertise tan Algerian pipes. Dunhill used to stain and sandblast his Shell pipes made of Algerian. I think most buyers of ten dollar Flame Grain Kaywoodies when a Yello Bole was a dollar and a basket pipe was fifty cents didn’t prefer a new pipe turning color like a cast iron skillet. Some did prefer a quick darkening pipe, or else Bob Marx would not have had a twenty year run of it.

Whatever the reason Algerian briar colors so quickly, I get all warm inside when I find one that’s very well seasoned.

 

[sablebrush52]

Algerian briar was stained, like any other briar. The briar itself is slightly darker than briar from other sources.

 

[OzPiper]

I don’t think that “raw” finishes was an option back in those days.

“Virgin” finishes were the lightest coloured pipes - just wax/varnish/shellac or whatever they used to finish pipes then

Your pipe is too evenly coloured (compared to old meerschaum pipes) to be a result of just having thousands of bowls smoked in it or colouration from sweaty hands IMO

 

[sablebrush52]

I don’t think that “raw” finishes was an option back in those days.

Raw, no, at least amongst commercial makers, but light natural finishes, honey like, were certainly available.

 

[mso489]

Iwan Ries used to source its house pipes from the Edwards Benton line made from oil cured Algerian briar, pretty nice, and moderately priced. I own three and they have held up exceedingly well and smoke great. But I have not found that they color differently from other briar. They just look good and stay that way.

 

[Briar Lee]

Last night I read a survey conducted in 1972 by the manufacturers of “The Pipe” that found 75% of their most expensive line of pipes over $10 were bought by women for their men.

the pipe history Billie W. Taylor II, Ph.D. Pipe Collector

www.thepipe.info

Technically , there’s not really any such thing as “Algerian Briar”, but in the thirties and forties and up to the Algerian Civil War in 1954 the colonial French in Algeria marketed a product we call Algerian briar, all over the world.

And thanks to a bunch of sweethearts and wives of the cigarette smoking men they bought expensive Marksman pipes for, I get in a lot of smoked a bowl or two large Marxman pipes, which cost ten or fifteen dollars and have slept in drawers for over 70 years.




Both the above pipes were almost new, and a much lighter shade of tan when I got them.

The bottom pipe I’ve smoked less than two dozen times and the top one less than fifty.

Those are what I call “Big Boys” with 880” bowls and they weigh 70 grams and are obviously a little bigger than a “C”.

If Marx stained his best pipes, it wasn’t much.

The things color beautifully.

But the first customers wanted a light tan pipe.

 

[OzPiper]

O

Raw, no, at least amongst commercial makers, but light natural finishes, honey like, were certainly available.

Often referred to as “virgin” finishes.
Probably not PC in today’s woke times

 

[Briar Lee]

O

Often referred to as “virgin” finishes.
Probably not PC in today’s woke times

Imagine importing Algerian briar from French colonist sources today, in our politically sensitive times:

The violence just boggles the mind:

Xxxxxs

How many Algerian natives did the French kill?

—-

Are we talking about the number of Algerians killed from 1830–1962 or just during independence war ?

If we are talking about 1830–1870, then you have to take into account that the total population of Algeria in 1830 was around 3 million people, in 1870 it was still 3 million people which means that during the 40 bloody years of conquest there were millions of Algerians either killed in fights or due to starvation since France was using scorched earth policy or through what the french call les enfumades (a method which consists of making people suffocate by smoke to death).

In 1866–1868 there was “la grande famine algérienne” which was caused by the former policy and extreme weather conditions, it was painted by Gustave Guillaumet

This famine alone accounted for 820 000 deaths in 1866.

From 1954–1962:

For Algerian sources the numbers vary between 300,000 up to 2 million people.

French sources cite numbers ranging from 30,000 up to 1,300,000 people, most French historians accept 300,000 as the correct estimate.

Overall, a number between 5–7 million people is a correct estimate.

Xxxxx

There is still briar harvested in Algeria.

There will never again be a French colonial briar exporting industry.

But when it was available the Pre 54 Algerian pipes soon looked like this, whether you like the patina or not:

 

[Chasing Embers]

Where do you get your information? These three were made of Red Algerian briar in the past 10 years.

 

[sablebrush52]

Technically , there’s not really any such thing as “Algerian Briar”, but in the thirties and forties and up to the Algerian Civil War in 1954 the colonial French in Algeria marketed a product we call Algerian briar, all over the world.

Boy, would the briar suppliers I've spoken with have a bone to pick with you about that statement. There is a difference, brought about in part by soil, climate, and strains. Algerian wasn't considered the best quality, due to its extra softness and propensity to crack. The mystique surrounding it is more the product of marketing than any innate superiority. But that softness did allow for incredibly craggy interesting blasts.

And, Barling, who along with Comoy, doing their own harvesting and processing in Algeria, found ways to make very beautiful and durable pipes from this wood, some of which in Barling's case had to do with several drying periods during the milling, carving, and finishing process to maximize the dimensional stability of the end product.

Supplies of Algerian briar did dry up following the war of Independence, and very little was available for many, many years. But that has changed somewhat, and also there were stocks that had already been harvested prior to 1954. I remember, when I was starting out with pipes in the early '70's, that Algerian briar was considered very hard to find.

 

[Briar Lee]

Where do you get your information? These three were made of Red Algerian briar in the past 10 years.

View attachment 260477View attachment 260478View attachment 260479

The Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 was one of the most horrific and bloody struggles the world has ever almost completely forgotten. Algeria was officially a part of France, and the French resisted the revolution with great brutality, killing anywhere from 300,000 to over a million native Muslim Algerians for eight years.

Mediterranean briar is all the same species. What made “Algerian Briar” as distinctive a product as Vandalia onions or Cuban tobacco were the French briar buyers who only bought and sold a special variety of briar harvested by the natives.

The top two of those pipes look stained and the bottom is much flashier and fancier grained than Pre 54 Algerian briar.

This “400” is in the mail to me, and this is what typical high grade Algerian briar looked like in its heyday. It’s been smoked and has started coloring, and within a few dozen smokes will darken all over like this early WDC 12” Wellington.





There are still people who dig out briar in Algeria.

But the French who lost the war had to flee to the mainland in 1962, and their grading and marketing system is long gone.

 

[Briar Lee]

Boy, would the briar suppliers I've spoken with have a bone to pick with you about that statement. There is a difference, brought about in part by soil, climate, and strains. Algerian wasn't considered the best quality, due to its extra softness and propensity to crack. The mystique surrounding it is more the product of marketing than any innate superiority. But that softness did allow for incredibly craggy interesting blasts.

And, Barling, who along with Comoy, doing their own harvesting and processing in Algeria, found ways to make very beautiful and durable pipes from this wood, some of which in Barling's case had to do with several drying periods during the milling, carving, and finishing process to maximize the dimensional stability of the end product.

Supplies of Algerian briar did dry up following the war of Independence, and very little was available for many, many years. But that has changed somewhat, and also there were stocks that had already been harvested prior to 1954. I remember, when I was starting out with pipes in the early '70's, that Algerian briar was considered very hard to find.

Jack Daniel’s is a bourbon that is labeled and marketed as Tennessee Whiskey, and it is a distinct product.

I read in a late forties Pipe Lover’s Magazine where the colonial French declared a season on digging briar, to conserve the industry.

The briar diggers were Berber tribesmen.

And they had no love for the French briar buyers.

The French were unimaginably harsh occupiers. Native Algerians fought with De Gaul’s Free French forces all the way through WW2 and on May 8, 1945 when the Germans surrendered the French army massacred from 15,000 to 45,000 Algerian civilians on a single day.

The Tragedy That Paved the Way for Algerian Independence - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

On 8 May 1945, French massacres in northeastern Algeria radicalized an entire generation

www.rosalux.de

The heath trees still grow in Algeria and there haven’t been as many harvested as before 1954 when there was an industry.

If there was a demand again for Algerian briar on a commercial scale the trade could be reborn.

 

[TheIronMonkey]

 

[Briar Lee]

There are about 850 different species of the Heather plant, of the Erica genus.

—-
Erica (heaths or heathers) is a large genus of flowering trees, shrubs, and subshrubs most diverse in southern Africa but found throughout the continent and in Europe. They have been introduced to Australia and North America. Erica is the type genus of the heath family, Ericaceae. As of January 2019, there are over 850 accepted species in Kew's Plants of the World Online.[1]
—-

Of those 850 species of heather, only one is used to make pipes, and only the burl root of those, not the trunk or limbs.

——
Erica arborea, the tree heath or tree heather, is a species of flowering plant(angiosperms) in the heather family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean Basinand Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa.[1] It is also cultivated as an ornamental.

The wood, known as briar root (French: bruyère, Catalan: bruc, Portuguese: betouro, Spanish: brezo), is extremely hard and heat-resistant, and is used for making smoking pipes. Leaf fossils attributed to this species were described for the Mio-Pleistocene deposit of São Jorge in Madeira Island.[2]

Erica arborea is an upright evergreen shrub or small tree with a typical height in the wild of some 7 m (23 ft), especially in Africa, but more typically 1–4 m (3–13 ft) in gardens. It bears dark green needle-like leaves and numerous small honey-scented bell-shaped white flowers. It is a calcifuge, preferring acid soil in an open sunny situation.[3]
—-

What made “Algerian Briar” a distinct product with an established meaning to the consumers of “buyere” pipes was not merely it came from Algeria (how could even the pipe maker know?) but rather that the colonial French briar buyers were expert in grading a specific type of Erica Arborea found in Algeria that could after proper curing and seasoning be fashioned into excellent smoking pipes.

What we read about it is that it came from poor soil, in horrible climatic conditions, on the windswept hills of the deserts of Algeria. Somehow these conditions made “Algerian Briar” marketed in the trade as such extremely fire resistant, and an excellent insulator.

In its day the pipe makers did not hold “Algerian Briar” in very high regard, for making pipes. It was soft, waxy, and hard to work with to fashion beautifully grained perfect pipes from. But the consumers of Algerian Briar pipes loved how they smoked.

I think the reason makers such as Marxman left their better grade Algerian Pipes as light tan as the manufacturing process could produce one was to let the customer know they were buying the real coin Algerian Briar.

If you were buying new pipes only based on how well they smoke, you’d want only pre 54 Algerian Briar.

With other briar pipes the dynamite good, perfect smoker is the rare, prized exceptional example.

With a Pre 54 Marxman, it’s expected.

 

[Briar Lee]

There are about 850 different species of the Heather plant, of the Erica genus.

—-
Erica (heaths or heathers) is a large genus of flowering trees, shrubs, and subshrubs most diverse in southern Africa but found throughout the continent and in Europe. They have been introduced to Australia and North America. Erica is the type genus of the heath family, Ericaceae. As of January 2019, there are over 850 accepted species in Kew's Plants of the World Online.[1]
—-

Of those 850 species of heather, only one is used to make pipes, and only the burl root of those, not the trunk or limbs.

——
Erica arborea, the tree heath or tree heather, is a species of flowering plant(angiosperms) in the heather family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean Basinand Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa.[1] It is also cultivated as an ornamental.

The wood, known as briar root (French: bruyère, Catalan: bruc, Portuguese: betouro, Spanish: brezo), is extremely hard and heat-resistant, and is used for making smoking pipes. Leaf fossils attributed to this species were described for the Mio-Pleistocene deposit of São Jorge in Madeira Island.[2]

Erica arborea is an upright evergreen shrub or small tree with a typical height in the wild of some 7 m (23 ft), especially in Africa, but more typically 1–4 m (3–13 ft) in gardens. It bears dark green needle-like leaves and numerous small honey-scented bell-shaped white flowers. It is a calcifuge, preferring acid soil in an open sunny situation.[3]
—-

What made “Algerian Briar” a distinct product with an established meaning to the consumers of “buyere” pipes was not merely it came from Algeria (how could even the pipe maker know?) but rather that the colonial French briar buyers were expert in grading a specific type of Erica Arborea found in Algeria that could after proper curing and seasoning be fashioned into excellent smoking pipes.

What we read about it is that it came from poor soil, in horrible climatic conditions, on the windswept hills of the deserts of Algeria. Somehow these conditions made “Algerian Briar” marketed in the trade as such extremely fire resistant, and an excellent insulator.

In its day the pipe makers did not hold “Algerian Briar” in very high regard, for making pipes. It was soft, waxy, and hard to work with to fashion beautifully grained perfect pipes from. But the consumers of Algerian Briar pipes loved how they smoked.

I think the reason makers such as Marxman left their better grade Algerian Pipes as light tan as the manufacturing process could produce one was to let the customer know they were buying the real coin Algerian Briar.

If you were buying new pipes only based on how well they smoke, you’d want only pre 54 Algerian Briar.

With other briar pipes the dynamite good, perfect smoker is the rare, prized exceptional example.

With a Marxman, it’s expected

 

[Chasing Embers]

With a Marxman, it’s expected

Latching on to another drugstore pipe manufacturer and preaching its gospel doesn't make it true. Siting anecdotal evidence is harmful to the overall compendium of online information for newer smokers.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Jack Daniel’s is a bourbon that is labeled and marketed as Tennessee Whiskey, and it is a distinct product.

All bourbon is whiskey, that one just happens to be made in Tennessee.

 

[canucklehead]

It is not the only Ericaceae harvested for its root burl for pipe making.

Arbutus - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[canucklehead]

Manzanita, used for pipe making in WW2 when there was briar shortages in North America, is also an Ericaceae.

 

[canucklehead]

Mountain Laurel is also sometimes used to make pipes, and it is also an Ericaceae.