The Whangee

Why would anyone nurse the ambition to acquire an old Dunhill bamboo pipe? If you’ve seen many of them, you know that these pipes are all too often ungainly and decrepit things.

Dunhill Catalogue, Collector Range Page, Courtesy of Jeff FollodorUnlike the bamboo we see in contemporary artisanal bamboo pipes, Dunhill used bamboo with all manner of issues. It was often too chunky. Knuckles were oddly spaced, usually way too widely spaced for the pipe’s length. The beautiful rhythmic proportions to which we are accustomered in work by Hiroyuki Tokutumi or Smiou Satou are completely lacking in Dunhill’s bamboos.

Amazingly, these traits are plainly evident in Dunhill’s catalogues. With all the bamboo in the world, it mystifies me that Dunhill’s pipe gnomes didn’t express their customarily restrained, elegant aesthetic in their Whangee pipes. Proportional, clear, and even-knuckled bamboo is no recent product of genetic engineering. It has always been around. It has just not always been used.

Still…sometimes Dunhill’s pipe makers produced exquisite bamboo pipes. I’ve seen several, and I’ve been jonesin’ for one for decades now. As an active quest, I gave up a long time ago. I figured if and when one came along I’d carpe the diem. I wasn’t holding my breath.

Imagine my joy at finding this wonderful Whangee Shell on Lawdog’s table at the NASPC Columbus Show. I could barely contain myself.

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Chicago Show 2010, Part 2

Quail Egg by Adam Davidson, Image © 2010 Neill Archer RoanShare

Like everyone else who goes to a pipe show, I only bring so much money with me. I don’t particularly want to spend it two days before the show officially opens. I’d like to be able to know all the options available to me. Unfortunately, artisans like Takeo Arita and Kei Gotoh don’t produce that much work, so if I want a piece by one of these artisans, it is important to carpe pipem, as it were.

Warren and I both bought Arita pipes. In my opinion, we acquired the best of what was available, though this opinion cannot help but reflect our taste. Unlike my Speeding Dublin, Warren chose a generously proportioned - beefy - Dublin with the kind of gravitas that one finds in a Lars Ivarsson. It’s a magnificent pipe. I only wish I could show pictures of it here.

Robert Lawing, Image © 2010 Neill Archer RoanUpon receiving a call from Robert Lawing advising me that John Crosby had just arrived in his room, I skedaddled back out to the Golf Wing. When one offers as much assistance to Planet Earth’s orbital integrity as my generously proportioned body does, skedaddling that far requires no little energy. Nevertheless, I put shoe leather to work and hied myself out to the far regions of the resort.

I wondered what the hilarious Mr. Crosby had managed to create for the show. I love those Crosby pipes that are in my collection. Among other virtues, John’s stem work is wonderfully comfortable and his pipes are sweet and consistent smokers.

While I was busy acquiring the Arita, I learned that Robert had been busy carpeing his first Crosby pipem, a wasp-like sandblast piece that cantilevered out from Robert’s jaw as if Santiago Calatrava had engineered it, himself. Robert and I have similar taste in pipes. If he hadn’t bought that pipe, I would have. I couldn’t help wondering as I looked through John’s case how many pipes were being snapped up in private case reviews throughout the resort?

Bamboo Poker by John Crosby, Image © 2010 Neill Archer RoanGood guy that he is, John made a little sandblast poker for me very much like the one you see depicted here - a pipe that I missed out on last year. He had given me a second chance at a pipe I really wanted.

I’ve been following John’s work for several years now. He surprised me this year as it became very obvious that the overall quality of John’s pipes spiked upward. While John’s stemwork has always been excellent, his shape vocabulary has been somewhat limited in past years. The pipes he brought this year revealed a much more diverse shape vocabulary.

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