Bearberry is also an Ericaceae, but it's not used for making pipes, the leaves were mixed with tobacco and dogwood (red osier) inner bark to smoke in pipes, the original native pipe blend Kinnikinnick.
Regarding the Coloring of Algerian Briar
- Thread starter Briar Lee
- Start date
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Marx wasn’t the only boutique maker of high dollar pipes sold to the carriage trade in fine department stores and tobacco shops that used Algerian briar.
Marx’s cheapest pipe matched the same $3.50 of a Kaywoodie Drinkless. His “400” cost $25 and was the most expensive factory pipe in the world for years, until Lee’s Five Star matched it in 1946 amd Kaywoodie’s Centennial in the late forties.
Tracy Mincer era Custombuilt pipes look like Algerian to me, and were also expensive.
Dunhill used Algerian for sandblasted pipes until the early sixties as did Barling, perhaps other London makers.
I own a 1946-7 large Peterson that surely looks Algerian.
The last maker of expensive pipes that used Algerian I know of was Edward’s.
And Wally Frank’s catalog offered his pipes made with Algerian Briar until the Algerian war cut off most supply.
Kaywoodie before it devolved from the best pipe in the world to the best pipe at Katz drug store offered an Algerian pipe in the characteristic light tan shade named Suntan. I’ve never seen one on eBay.
Algerian is so soft I doubt any fifty cent machine made pipes of the thirties could have used it.
Like bourbon made in Tennessee, and marketed as Tennessee Whiskey, an Algerian pipe was more expensive, the same same way Jack Daniels was top shelf and some bourbon made at Heaven Hill in Bardstown Kentucky was bar whiskey:
I own a few Post 53 Marxman pipes sold by Mastercraft marked as made in France of Algerian briar, and quite frankly they all are not the same to smoke as the real ones made in New York City, although Mastercraft specified far higher figured briar than Marx used.
But there was a day pipes made of Algerian Briar were regarded as the best smokers in the world.
But on November 1, 1954 the Algerian war ended the organized trade article.
Manzanita was marketed as Mission Briar by KB&B and Dr Grabow built their current factory in Sparta North Carolina to be close to mountain laurel, which was sold as Domestic Briar.
After the war all the pipe makers returned to using the burl roots of Erica Arboreta harvested from the rim of Mediterranean.
My family has owned 20 acres of standing hardwood timber in the Ozark foothills since 1876.
There are big oaks in there that sprouted when the Osage tribe owned that land.
The folks that study these matters tell us Missouri has 22 different oak species with about 30 hybrids of those, but only Quercus alba (white oak), and only a few of those, are purchased by the inspectors at Independent Stave Company at Lebanon Missouri to be fashioned into bourbon barrels and charred.
My pipe smoking mentor Harry Hosterman made an excellent living because he knew which white oaks the inspectors at Lebanon wanted to buy. While all white oak timber makes excellent (but not the best) firewood only certain white oaks make whiskey barrel stave bolt grade. Other white oak lumber makes “veneer grade” and are sliced thin to make veneer cabinets.
Imagine if on November 1, 1954 Harry Hosterman and his fellow “chainsaw men” all drove over to Lebanon and started shooting at the inspectors and burned down the stave mill.
Essentially that’s how the organized and graded trade in Algerian briar ended.
The briar burls were still there, the native diggers were still there, but maybe a million natives died and the buyers lost the war.
To try to restore the trade, there would have to be an entire system of inspection and grading restored.
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Actually there is briar that does come from Algeria. I’m not sure why you’d make such a statement.
Go online and spend some time and Google.
Bouchemat Briar is one such company that harvests and supplies briar from Jijel, Algeria.
Jijel - Wikipedia
Wonderful!Actually there is briar that does come from Algeria. I’m not sure why you’d make such a statement.
Go online and spend some time and Google.
Bouchemat Briar is one such company that harvests and supplies briar from Jijel, Algeria.
Jijel - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
View attachment 263043
Glad to see it.
It’s not the colonial French export product but it’s Algerian briar.
Actually there is briar that does come from Algeria. I’m not sure why you’d make such a statement.
Bouchemat Briar is one such company that harvests and supplies briar from Jijel, Algeria.
Factual statement vs ruminations, cogitations and musings
What other countries are popular sources for the majority of modern pipe makers?
wouldnt the charcoal filtering exclude it from being labeled bourbon?
and why did the French feel it worthwhile to cross the sea to take over a desert?
Why did you give my reply a laugh emoji?
I was stating something factual, nothing humorous about the reply, so I’m a bit confused as to what you thought was funny?
As I understand the process, the initial run of distilled white, clear liquor is very close to the same whether it’s McCormick, Jack Daniel’s, or Jim Beam.
The barrels are indeed all the same new white oak barrels, from the same suppliers.
There are four char levels used, inside the barrels. It’s the maker’s choice, the cost would be the same, up to one minute char.
What makes Missouri bourbon different, and inferior, to Tennesse and Kentucky is that bourbon needs a certain number of days of cold, and of heat, and the small difference in climate favors Tennesse and Kentucky.
As to briar it must be the same.
When world demand for briar was maybe a hundred times what it is today, premier pipe makes like Dunhill and later on Marxman discovered the highest grade of briar for smoking, not beauty, came from a region in Algeria where some kind of sadistically picky French briar inspectors graded it.
It won’t ever be sold again:
The French were willing to murder 45,000 civilians on May 8, 1945. Even so, the French lost the war and their colony.
Telling Berber tribesman only a certain kind of burl and no others would be purchased was a kindness, compared to the other oppressions and atrocities the French perpetrated in Algeria.
That was a grade of Algerian briar, which grade was in different quality levels.
The barrels are indeed all the same new white oak barrels, from the same suppliers.
There are four char levels used, inside the barrels. It’s the maker’s choice, the cost would be the same, up to one minute char.
What makes Missouri bourbon different, and inferior, to Tennesse and Kentucky is that bourbon needs a certain number of days of cold, and of heat, and the small difference in climate favors Tennesse and Kentucky.
As to briar it must be the same.
When world demand for briar was maybe a hundred times what it is today, premier pipe makes like Dunhill and later on Marxman discovered the highest grade of briar for smoking, not beauty, came from a region in Algeria where some kind of sadistically picky French briar inspectors graded it.
It won’t ever be sold again:
The French were willing to murder 45,000 civilians on May 8, 1945. Even so, the French lost the war and their colony.
Telling Berber tribesman only a certain kind of burl and no others would be purchased was a kindness, compared to the other oppressions and atrocities the French perpetrated in Algeria.
That was a grade of Algerian briar, which grade was in different quality levels.
Factual statement vs ruminations, cogitations and musings
He’s been Officially Rebranded!
Why did you give my reply a laugh emoji?
I was stating something factual, nothing humorous about the reply, so I’m a bit confused as to what you thought was funny?
Why did the French colonize Algeria?
Mostly for money.
They wanted to expand the French Empire.
There was also the matter of converting the Muslims, to Christianity.
In a record of colonial cruelty the French were only surpassed in cruelty maybe by the Belgians. The French murdered millions, nobody knows how many millions, from 1830 to 1962 in Algeria.
The Algerian briar export industry came later than 1830.
There were savage tribesmen selling briar roots they’d regarded as worthless brush to colonial French briar buyers.
It had to be a scene we cannot imagine today.
It was the best grade of smoking briar ever sold on world markets.
I wondered if that was you who picked that pipe up. I thought about buying it every day for about a week. When I saw it sold I thought, "whew, I guess my sister will get a present at Christmas."
Why did you give my reply a laugh emoji?
I was stating something factual, nothing humorous about the reply, so I’m a bit confused as to what you thought was funny?
Pardon me, I intended a like.
I’m glad to see native Algerians harvesting and exporting briar,
Thanks for the synopsis I’ve realized I’m in need of a book on French history; I only know a few highlights. I enjoy those movies where the French foreign legion is in Africa.
It's just an emoji guy, no need to get upset!Why did you give my reply a laugh emoji?
I was stating something factual, nothing humorous about the reply, so I’m a bit confused as to what you thought was funny?
I get weird ones a lot, and just pretend to not understand it.