For serious pipe-smoking, the briar should always be your first choice. However, if on occasion you desire a novel experience, try reaching for one of the more unusual pipes, such as a clay pipe, a calabash, a corncob, a churchwarden, or even a water pipe. These are some of the most readily available types, although the variety of possible pipes and pipe materials must be counted as almost endless.

Smokers throughout the world have at one time or another used pipes made of bamboo, bone, bronze, glass, horn, iron, ivory (both walrus and elephant), nutshells, silver, steel, and stone, to name but a few. Most of these pipe materials would give a disappointing smoke. However, modern pipe smokers have found that a few of the more unusual pipe types do provide a satisfactory smoke, and add diversity to the smoker's shelf as well.

THE CALABASH

The calabash pipe is made from the neck of a gourd, a plant whose family includes the cucumber, the melon, and the squash.

The gourds- from which these pipes are fashioned usually come from South Africa, where the calabash originated. When the Dutch founded Cape Town in 1652, they discovered the natives busily smoking hemp in homemade gourd pipes. The natives would clean out the gourd, let it dry thoroughly, and then use it as a pipe.

Calabash pipes became popular because they are beautiful and of an unusual shape. The calabash gourd makes an ideal pipe because of its light weight, its large air space, which yields a cool smoke, and its tendency to color well.

The calabash pipe

After being cut, the gourd is usually fitted with a meerschaum insert, called a "cup" or "top bowl." Since nature forms the gourd, no two calabash pipes are ever exactly alike, and each pipe must be hand-made. The meerschaum insert is fitted into a cork ring to insure air-tight connection. The connection between the shank and the curved vulcanite stem also calls for careful hand fitting.

While a gourd is growing, the cultivator aids in the formation of its gracefully curved neck by gradually training the neck to the correct form. This is done by placing Under the gourd a flat board in which pegs are inserted, pegs that hold the neck in a prescribed position. These pegs are then moved, little by little, so as to force the neck into the curve desired.

After the gourd is harvested and its neck removed, the flesh inside the neck is scraped away. The outside of the gourd is then sanded and polished with fine abrasive, and the gourd is dried in the sun. Only then is it fitted with stem and bowl.

The large air space beneath the bowl cools the smoke and pre­vents juices from entering the stem and the smoker's mouth. Indeed, the graceful, lightweight calabash provides one of the coolest smokes possible—and its unique shape makes it an ideal reading or fireside pipe.

CORNCOBS

Washington, Missouri, is the home of the corncob pipe. Wash­ington resembles any other small town on the banks of the Mis­souri River except that it turns out about 15,000,000 pipes a year, all made of corncobs. The corncob-pipe industry has helped sup­port farmers in the area ever since 1869, when a local farmer first thought of the lowly corncob as a cheap, expendable, and avail­able pipe material.

Over the years, local farmers have developed a special type of corn, known as "Collier" corn, with an exceptionally large and firm cob. The plant is large, the stalk measuring two inches in diameter and taking one hundred and twenty days to mature in­stead of the usual ninety. The farmers bring the cobs to the pipe factory and sell the kernels separately.

Before the cobs can be worked, they have to dry for at least two years. Cobs smaller than two inches in diameter are rejected. The outside of each cob is smoothed out by machine; the soft spots are filled with plaster of Paris, fitted with a stem or reed, and varnished. The modern corncob has many different bowl finishes and a variety of shanks and stems.

The corncob pipe should be smoked slowly and allowed to dry thoroughly between smokes, to give many months, or even years, of pleasant smoking. As with any type of pipe, the smoker should have several and smoke them in rotation.

There are as many corncob-pipe styles as there are styles of briar pipes. Some smokers prefer corncobs to all other pipe mater­ials except briar. In general, corncobs make a satisfying change-of-pace pipe and provide a pleasant diversion.

WATER PIPES

The idea of forcing smoke through water before allowing it to enter the mouth was probably originated by the African Bushmen or Pygmies. Many years before Columbus discovered the New World, these natives were already smoking hemp in a variety of water pipes, such as gourds, hollowed-out sections of wooden logs, horns of animals, and sections of bamboo.

But the most practical vessel for holding water seems to have been the coconut shell, because it was hard and durable. Where it might have taken days to hollow out a log, a coconut shell could be turned into a pipe in a matter of minutes, and would last for many years.

This water pipe, also known as the narghile, a word that means "coconut shell," was often fitted with a pair of reed or bamboo tubes, one to hold the burning tobacco and the other to draw the smoke through.

Today, water pipes remain very popular throughout Africa, the Near East, and the Far East, where they are known under the diverse names of narghile (Indian), hookah (Turkish), kalian,  (Persian), hubble-bubble, and many others.

The best-known Persian or Turkish type of water pipe general­ly consists of a jar that holds the water and a long tube, one end supporting the burning tobacco and the other end extending into the jar below the level of the water. A second tube, above the water level, is used to draw the smoke downward from the bowl, through the water, and into the smoker's mouth.

The smoke of the water pipe is cooler than that of any other pipe. By the time the smoke has bubbled through the water and passed out of the long tube, it attains nearly room temperature.

                                 

The smoke also becomes very mild. The water acts as a filter which keeps the impurities, tobacco flakes and moisture particles from entering the mouth. But the water also absorbs some of the taste and flavor.

If you have the inclination to smoke a water pipe, you can probably find a Turkish, Persian, Indian, or all-metal Chinese water pipe in many good pipe shops. You can vary the taste of the smoke by adding different flavorings to the water; the possible aromas that can be created are without end.

The water receptacle should be rinsed out after every three or four smokes, and the tube which holds the tobacco bowl should be cleaned or replaced at regular intervals. Make sure that all the fittings connecting the tubes and jar are air-tight. The water pipe is a cool and agreeable departure from ordinary pipes, ideal for relaxed, hot-weather smoking.

CLAY PIPES

Millions of clay pipes were smoked in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially in England, where they greatly increased the popularity of smoking.

English Staffordshire-ware pipes

The pipes were so inexpen­sive that they could be discarded after one or two smokes, and replaced by fresh pipes. The clay churchwarden, one of the most popular clay pipes ever created, has been immortalized in art and literature and remains a favorite.

Clay pipes are still largely handmade, from good-quality clay. Wet clay is placed in metal pipe molds, with a long steel needle running through the stems to shape the air holes. The pipes are then dried, kiln-baked, and finished. Bowl decorations may be transferred from the mold, or painted on.

The city of Gouda, in the Netherlands, is the traditional clay-pipe center of the world. Even today, Gouda factories are turning out about 20,000 clay pipes daily, or about 7,000,000 pipes a year, conclusive evidence that the clay pipe has remained a pop­ular item.

Alsatian porcelain pipe

The list of pipes available to the more imaginative smoker does not end here. Pipes with an aluminum shank and bowl base, briar bowl, and vulcanite stem are popular today. They are simple to clean—the bowl can be easily removed and the shank scoured thoroughly with boiling water.

Wooden pipes with porcelain bowls were widely smoked in Germany in the nineteenth century, and are still enjoyed by many pipe smokers. Long-stemmed pipes have also waxed and waned in popularity over the years. The churchwarden style, popular in clay and metal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has recently been revived in a somewhat shorter-stemmed briar ver­sion. The long-stemmed Turkish chibouque remains a favorite of smokers who like to puff while sitting cross-legged on a cushion.

Whatever your style of smoking, chances are that somewhere you'll find a pipe to match it.

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