That's just his flavor of the week. Before it was Pipes by Lee, tomorrow it'll be another. I've got Algerian artisan pieces that smoke no differently than other briar examples.
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and cut off 85% of the rubber supply and any prospects for a quick return of inported briar for smoking pipes the government dispatched bureaucrats and came up with the data that before the war, America had about ten million briar pipe smokers who bought an average of three new briar pipes a year, for a total of 30 million briar pipes.
So the government
did not ration briar pipes. There was a price freeze, but also the unions agreed to not raise labor rates.
During the war there was an enormous profit incentive to find domestic briar substitutes. Mission briar from California and mountain laurel from North Carolina were the closest, and were so widely used another government survey in 1945 found over half the new pipes sold were domestic briar.
And a few years later the traditional imported briar completely displaced all domestic substitutes.
If a beginner wants the best example of a beautifully made and grained example of an American factory pipe that is a four hole stinger Kaywoodie with a large ball. After the war began Kaywoodie shrank the size of the ball, to save aluminum.
And those are the only really collector grade American factory pipes, and priced accordingly.
If he wants a beautiful American factory pipe for peanuts that is a 7 or 5 pointed star Lee. Lee also used a curing process that made break in easy and the briar taste sweet, probably an oil cure.
Something like this large saddle stem three star grade 7 point star Lee costs about the same as a trip through the fast burger joint.
A Lee is an outrageous bargain for a beginner trying to accumulate a collection of pipes.
But after he’s hooked, and his pipes don’t ever burn his tongue or gurgle and he’s discovered tobaccos like Five Brothers and PS LNF and 1792 and Happy Brown Bogie, then there’s a step up from a Lee.
This enormous Marxman square panel “Big Boy” cost me a grand total of less than $35 delivered on eBay tonight, with tax.
That pipe will look like this one an hour after I get it.
What I learned from this thread is why they turn that reddish brown color.
The tannins in the briar are driven outwards and trapped by the rouge and tripoli polish Marxman used for final finish. It’s only a whisper deep, and can be brought back to light tan by a restorer.
Marx was the American Dunhill.
Those huge $15 largest size pipes were and are the best bargains for a serious pipe smoker ever sold by anyone in the world. The looks are an aquired taste, but construction was perfect and each hand made, using the best of the best Algerian briar
to smoke.
When I’m gone my buckets and racks of pipes will get passed on to new smokers who will love them, hopefully half as much as I have.
Time for a poem, some lucky few of us had to memorize growing up:
The Bridge Builder
BY
WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
