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Painting by the German artist Ludwig Knaus (1866) |
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Smoking your pipe... |
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Why prefer the pipe? |
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| What would you prefer? To dine off silver plates or throwaway plates? Through the years silver plates get sentimental value and become like old friends. And this is exactly what happens with pipes too. If you smoke cigars or cigarettes you just throw them away when you are finished. There is not much fun in that. Besides - if you chose pipe-smoking you do not smoke all that much. The pipe requires your attention. And if it does not get it, you will have to lit it again, and again, and again... |
Is Napoleon the reason why we smoke briars? |
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When you are smoking your Erica Arborea... |
| I do not know. But it is told that about 175 years ago
a pipe-maker from the French town of Saint Claude went to Corsica. He would visit the
place where Napoleon was born. The pipe-maker carried only one pipe with him: His handmade meerschaum. By accident he dropped the pipe and it fell to the ground and broke to pieces. Now he was in a mess. He went to a farmer who was known as a very good wood-carver and asked him if he would carve a head for the pipe. The farmer said yes and a couple of days later he delivered a beautifully cut pipe-head made of the root called Erica Arborea in Latin. |
In my opinion, Erica Arborea - or in plain English:
The Briar Root - is the finest and best tasting pipe-material in the world. I have never smoked a water-pipe. Many years ago I smoked corn-cobs. I have a couple of Dutch porcelain-pipes. I have a meerschaum-pipe. But there is nothing like the taste of a fine briar. The
shape then... If you are going to buy your first pipe try a Bulldog. It behaves well - and
you will get a good smoke. |
| My very own smoking-experience: |
| - Do not put more tobacco in your pipe, than you want to smoke. |
| - Do not smoke the last, wet rest of tobacco in your pipe - they taste nasty. |
| - Do not let your pipe rest with a pipe cleaner in it. |
| - If your pipe is foul - let it rest for three to four weeks. There is no need to use any pipe cleaning liquid or any other liquid such as liquor. Danish Snaps is a famous strong liquor. A well-known author of pipe-books recommended the liquor as a good remedy for cleaning your pipes. I have tried it and I say - well , drink the Danish Snaps yourself - do not let your pipes drink it. |
| - Use five or six pipes - do not smoke the same pipe always. It will get very tired - and very foul. |
| - Pipe systems: I always remove them. |
| - Pipes with a funny taste: Bamboo. The pipes are
rather pretty and they tend to be expensive, but I am of the opinion that they have a very
special - and not very good - taste. |
| - Did you know that some pipes were made in Albany and Spain? My Albany pipe is dark, and
long, and in fact it is pretty. But I do not know from wich material it is made. It
certainly is not briar! If you are a tourist and you are in the mood you can buy almost anything. Once I was in Spain I bought a pipe and the bowl had the shape of a bulls head with horns and tiny glass-eyes and everything. It has a lot of power in that way that it kills every good tobacco. |
| - And then I have a large pipe of a very special kind. I do not quite know if it is made of meerschaum, but it has the colour. It looks as if was heavily sandblasted. Now to the taste: Try and fill your pipe with ashes and then lit it - then you have the taste. It is a shame because the pipe was quite expensive. |
| - I have got a special problem of my own: I have a
fairly large collection of pipes - about eighty. However, I only use eight of them - the
cheapest. I have not the heart to smoke the rest of my collection! The matter is: The best
way to preserve the beauty of a pipe is... not to smoke it! And now to the pipes I do smoke a lot: Stanwell - of course! Two of them. As for the shape I would call one of them Brandy and the other one is rather special: It is a sand blast Bulldog, but the bowl is very high. It is the only pipe I have seen of that shape. It almost reminds you of the funnel of an old prairie locomotive. A Paul Olsen (also a Danish pipe) - it is a sand blast and of exactly the same shape as the Stanwell mentioned above. Three Savinellis - all of them Bulldogs. But one is a bent-model. After a good long vacation it is a really wonderful pipe to smoke - but I say, it needs a rest every now and then. Most bents do that, you know. BBB - also a Bulldog. My straight grain Parker - that one which should have been a Dunhill if it had not been for all the pit marks. The shape? Canadian. |
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And remember this... |
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I know it is wrong, but I do it anyway... |
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A little anecdote |
| I always lit my pipe with a lighter. It is the easy way. The right way to lit your pipe is the match-way. I have been told that the flame of a match has a lower temperature than that of a gaslighter. Therefore, matches will cause less harm to the fine briar. | During World War I the saying among the
soldiers went: Never use one match to light three cigarettes. Number one: The enemy saw the flame. Number two: He took aim. Number three: He fired. |
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A heavy smoker... |
A heavy Danish smoker... |
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A heavy express-locomotive
(Litra E) used by the Danish railways (DSB) until the 1960'ies. |
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