How Many Angels? A new scholarly article by Jon Guss

In my opinion, business history and pipe scholar Jon Guss has just completed one of the best-researched and insightfully drawn histories I’ve read among all pipe publications. He’s done this work with one of the most beloved and revered of the great British brands: Barling and Sons.

I’m privileged to speak to Jon frequently about his research as its going on. Whether he’s poring through archives in some distant library, reviewing trans-Atlantic passenger manifests, unearthing old correspondence or corporate notes, he works very hard to ensure that what he presents as fact is unimpeachable – or as close as he can come to that very high standard.

“How Many Angels? Another Look at the Barling Transition” reveals that there wasn’t just one transition at the esteemed Barling and Sons. There were two. By unraveling how the Barling business passed from the family to other hands, Jon is able to describe the consequences of the transitions in ownership and control.

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Smoking Vintage Capstan

Early yesterday morning I decided to invade my stash of vintage tobaccos to take one of them with me to share with my Saturday morning pipe-smoking crew. Pawing through the drawer, I came upon this old tin of British-production Capstan Yellow,  their mild Navy Flake.

I’ve had this old tin for many years. It’s easy to discern from the photos that the tin has has taken a few dings and knocks on its journey from the factory floor to the present. Given all the abuse heaped on it, I felt I was betting against long odds that the tobacco inside would still be good. The seals on these old square tins are easily compromised. I’ve opened pristine-looking vintage tins only to discover dust or mold inside. This tin was anything but pristine.

After breakfast, I settled down on the old blue sofa in Old Virginia Tobacco Company’s back room. I put the tin to my ear and shook it, listening for that dry, tobacco death rattle that compromised tins issue upon being shaken. All I heard was a dull series of thunks as the papered brick of flakes slid slightly from one tin side to the other. I asked my friend, Jim, if he had a quarter I could use to twist the tin lid away.

“I can do better than that,” he replied, handing me a Sacajawea dollar coin. I took the coin and began trying to pry the lid off, but to no avail. Watching me get nowhere with the tin lid, Jim took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and flipped out the screw-driver-bottle-top opener. I pried the top open and looked down at the crisply folded paper surrounding the flakes.

Scents of port wine, figs, molasses, and vinegar wafted up. I pulled the paper back and there, swaddled in white and gold paper, lay a brick of oily chocolate and gold navy flakes in perfect condition. I pulled the brick and paper from the tin, removed the tobacco, and inspected the striated tobacco flakes. The top two flakes had slid down the side of the brick before packaging, resembling a coverlet that had slid off a bed.

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Inspiration

Early 1930s Vintage Comoy Deluxe Straight Grain Author (256)While more than a few pipe collectors and smokers appreciate and seek out sculptural and conceptual pipes, many – if not most, of us still feel a deep connection to classic shapes. There is a reason that billiards, bulldogs, lovats, canadians, rhodesians, pots, zulus, dublins, authors, and other classic shapes have endured. Their lines, proportions, and feel have propelled them into the canon, and while there are myriad expressions of each shape, if a variation strays too far from the canonical, it becomes something else. It may be breathtakingly beautiful. Its originality may be compelling, but it is no longer a classic.

Bent Billiard by Michael ParksEvery aesthetic realm feels tension between a desire to be rooted in its canon and a desire to break free of classical restraints. For me, this tension rivets my interest. I simultaneously hunger for what’s established and for what’s fresh. Indeed, were there no classical realm, how would we measure innovation? One cannot strike out in new directions if every direction is new; one cannot wander from a path that has never been walked. We need the classics to understand invention.

It was during the late 1980s that I studied with the author, philosopher, and futurist, Jay Ogilvy. At the time, Jay was working at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) working with his colleagues on identifying and tracking large social and cultural trends.

During one of our seminars, Jay spoke with us about the rhythms of relative liberalism and conservatism over the centuries. Using myriad examples throughout history, Jay demonstrated that the most liberal times occurred at the end decades of centuries and the most conservative times occurred in the beginning decades of centuries.

Fat Apple by Michael LindnerAlthough these trends do not strictly follow the calendar, at the time we were entering not only the last decade of the 20th century, but also the last decade of the second millennium.  Understandably, a vigorous discussion ensued where we wrestled with how the millennial end might amplify a readily observable hypothesis observable at the end of centuries. We explored the idea in philosophical, artistic, religious, financial, social, and economic terms.

We could already see evidence of the truth of Ogilvy’s observations in books like Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. For example, a rise of religious fundamentalism was already occurring, and not solely in Islam which Huntington so presciently described, but also in Judeaism and Christianity.

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Trendwatching: There will increasingly be great pipes and good buys in the British-made estate market.

For decades, quite a few of the pipe hobby’s most serious collectors have focused on collecting British-made pipes by Dunhill, GBD, Sasieni, Comoy, Parker, BBB, and – one of my favorites – Barling. Like my own father, many of these collectors were from “The Greatest Generation” – those who survived the Second World War.

Sadly, these men are reaching or have reached the end of their days, and their collections are being dismantled and sold in the estate market. Some of these collections are extraordinary; others are full of pipes that have been smoked extensively.

If you pay attention to the estate market, you have undoubtedly noticed that there are significantly more British-made pipes for sale. I predict that the supply will continue to increase, and disproportionately to the number of buyers out there.

We are already seeing the biggest implication of this demographic shift: significantly lower prices for fine British collectibles. I’ve seen what many would consider fairly rare pipes selling for prices that were unthinkable five years ago.

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A Landaw Barling Billiard

I stopped into Smokingpipes store earlier this month while I was in Myrtle Beach recently. While I was there, I was allowed to peruse the English estates in the Pipe Library upstairs. There are hundreds of pipes in Smokingpipes’ inventory that don’t make it to the web site for months on end, so visiting is a great opportunity to find some real treasures.

I happened onto a box full of old Barlings. This old sandblasted billiard was among them. My eye was drawn to the beautifully craggy sandblast. This blast style results from the stummels being left in a rotating drum where the media blasts away at whatever the nozzle happens to be pointing. These old blasts are revealed by differential grain density patterns randomly encountering the blasting media. Chance, pure and simple, makes these sandblast finishes what they are.

This particular size, the EXEL, is my favorite among Barling’s offerings because they have a nice capacity but are not too big. (L: 5.45” 139mm, H: 1.58” 40mm, Ø: .75” 19mm)

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