A blend is a blend is a blend. Not.

“I don’t really care for this.”

How many times have you thought or uttered these words after trying a new tobacco? We pipe-smokers may not be experts on much, but one thing we feel a lot of confidence about concerns those tobaccos we like versus those we don’t. When a tobacco strikes the palate as unduly bitter, harsh, or lacking flavor altogether, that sense of confidence is turbo-charged. If you’re like me, it may never have occurred to you that there may be room for doubt.

Yes, that’s what I’m writing here. You may be mistaken about what you like or dislike.

“How can that be? That’s rubbish!” you’re probably thinking. I wouldn’t blame you a bit for that reaction. After all, we do know what we like, don’t we? Stick with me here. Keep reading.

When I travel to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on business I usually stay with my friend Scott Stultz at his Marietta home in the apartment in his studio there.

Scott Stultz lights his pipe in his studio,After dinner, Scott and I always retire upstairs to the studio for conversation and to smoke our pipes. We almost always choose to smoke the same tobacco, sometimes popping a tin of tobacco previously unknown to one or both of us.

Our ritual almost always begins with “What pipe are you smoking?” We’ll swap them, look them over, give them back, light up then commence our discussion.

Sometimes, when one or the other of us are particularly excited about the tobacco’s flavor, we’ll swap pipes to taste the tobacco in each other’s pipe after wiping the bit off. We both know that this behavior is almost unheard of, smoking somebody else’s pipe, but it has led to some otherwise inaccessible revelations.

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Tobacco Roads

An Amish farm in Lancaster County above Mount Joy.

Wednesday evening, after dinner, my friend Scott Stultz and I drove out through the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania countryside so that I could photograph the tobacco fields at dusk.

Winding lanes, one-lane covered bridges, and stone houses dotted the route we took north from Marietta. In some forested creek bottoms, the old oak canopies were so thick overhead to make it seem like night was scouting the terrain.

The route we traversed took us out beyond Mount Joy. I wondered– as we took one hairpin curve after another, winding over and around drumlin hills and ridges–if we would reach our destination before the twilight vanished.

“This is one my biking routes,” Scott said. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Since I left the wild reaches of Wyoming’s Rocky Mountains decades ago, I have been unaccustomed to seeing landscapes so picturesque as to conjure empty lumps in my chest, but heartbreakingly beautiful scenes unwound before me with every turn.

When the August sun’s haunches squat to the horizon line, the late evening light crawls and drips. Serrated cornstalk leaves were so tall and thick as to make greenish-gold canyons through which we drove. I’ve never seen forbidding corn before. Moses may have parted the Red Sea, but he would never have been able to part that corn.

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Put this in your pipe and smoke it.

Thank God tobacco is a plant. Otherwise I’d have had to give it up early last month.

After nearly 60 years of omnivorousness, I am a vegan. Actually I am stricter than a vegan. I make a vegan look a dumpster diver.

Vegans eat wheat. I don’t. Vegans eat sugar. Not me. Vegans drink wine, eat white rice, and drink the occasional brewski. I neither eat nor imbibe these things. Do you sense a certain holier-than-thou-ness?

If so, good. I need the zeal normally found in the reformed drunk to keep me going. This ain’t easy. I still have to drive by rib joints, steakhouses, and oyster bars. It’s ridiculous. In my new life, I can’t even drink to forget what a grilled t-bone tastes like after a martini and oysters on the half shell. But, all good things come to an end. In my case, all good things went to my end. It’s time to focus on beginnings.

My friend, Neil Flancbaum, insists that I’m not a vegan. I can hear him dialing me now to harangue me about my word choice.

“Vegans use no animal products. They won’t use leather. I know you. You love leather and are not about to give it up. You are NOT a vegan,” he mutters. “You eat a plant-based diet. Get over it.”

“I’m a dietary vegan,” I persist, unwilling to be deprived of my new label. I like the easy comfort a stereotype affords. Birkenstocks here I come. Hemp tunics get ready. I still have some patchouli from my Oregon days.

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The Susquehanna Pipe Chest

Designed by Scott Stultz, the Susquehanna Pipe Chest was created as a storage chest for a seven-day set of  smoking pipes. These pipes were commissioned, as well, from the Pennsylvania-based artisan, Jack Howell, who created a special limited edition of pipes for members of A Passion for Pipes.

These pipes were inspired by and based upon a compact, straight chubby Rhodesian that was originally designed and manufactured by Comoy’s of London, the oldest pipe manufacturer in the world at the time. Each Comoy-made pipe shape was referred to by a number-identifier. The Comoy shape number for set prototype is 283.

When one opens the Susquehanna Pipe Chest lid, seven identical book-matched, birdseye maple cradles are revealed, nestled inside a walnut receiver. The cradle geometry was developed to “cradle” the pipe bowls to keep them positioned upright. When the cradles are removed from their carrier and positioned on end with their walnut spines pointing inward, they form a septagonal pipe rack.

Named for the river that defines the southern edge of Lancaster country, Pennsylvania, the chest was designed and built in a place where fine wood-crafting traditions have thrived among the Pennsylvania Dutch peoples for centuries. In this place, craftsmanship is more than a value, it is a way of life

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An artisanal case for artisanal pipes.

Updated on Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 9:00AM by Neill Archer Roan

As AutoCAD illustration of the 283 case in closed position.many pipes as I’ve collected over the years, until late last summer, I’ve never owned a 7-day set. While I suppose I could have created a set according to some organizing principle, I am a bit of a purist in how I think about 7-day sets.

To me, they were created toward the end of being together. They belong together. They should stay together.

7-Day set of 283 Jack Howell pipes with the original Comoy 283 (top left)It Artisan Jack Howellis especially meaningful to me that my first, and perhaps only, 7-day set is comprised of pipes made for the Passion for Pipes 283 project by Jack Howell. I love this smallish, chubby Rhodesian shape. Aesthetically, it brings a smile to my face. As a smoker, I find it perfect in capacity, proportions, weight, balance, draw, and flavor.

These pipes also remind me of those fifty or so pipe friends who also bought the pipe and who share my enthusiasm for its wonderful smoking properties. Finally, the pipes were made by Jack Howell, an artisan who I respect and admire for more reasons that I can enumerate here. He is not only a terrific pipe maker, he is a good man and a good friend.

Because I believe that a 7-day set is completed by a case that keeps the pipes together, I commissioned my case from my designer-friend, Scott Stultz. Like Jack – who is not only a pipe maker, but a bamboo fly rod maker, a rebuilder of vintage lathes, and a classical musician – Scott is a Renaissance man: a kitchen and furniture designer, an artist, and a fine writer, too.

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