Prerogatives and Regrets

When it comes to pipes and tobacco, I find nothing so perplexing nor mystifying as my changing preferences with respect to pipe shapes. Like a lot of you, I have always had particular favorite shapes. I have had shapes that I could take or leave, and I have had shapes that I dislike, often intensely.

I have always loved zulus, princes, rhodesians, bulldogs, and eggs. These are shapes that I find pleasing to the eye and to the hand; hand-feel has always been an important consideration.

Conversely, I have never liked skaters, pickaxes, fugu-style blowfishes, or the elephant’s foot. I’m not particularly fond of the poker or the dublin, either, although I own a number of pipes in these two shapes that I treasure. I find many of the mid-century Modern shapes developed for Stanwell by Sixten Ivarsson in the late 60s and early 70s bizarre.

Why then did I recently acquire the Michael Lindner pickaxe you see depicted at right? This is not a sort-of pickaxe. This is not a pipe leaning in the pickaxe direction. This pipe is emblematic of the pickaxe shape. Further, I love it. Like every other Lindner I own, it is a remarkable smoker. It feels wonderful in the hand. It is well-balanced, and it sports one of Mike’s better sandblasts. Anyone who knows Lindner’s work knows that the man can create great blasts. (This one is a Spider grade: Lindner’s highest sandblast grade.

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Bamboozled

From top: Chestnut by Jess Chonowitsch, Chestnut by Jess Chonowitsch, Apple by Michael Lindner, Pot by Jess Chonowitsch, Raindrop by Yuki TokutumiHere in Northern Virginia’s mild Atlantic climate, if you plant bamboo in our fertile soils it will thrive like a native grass. You’ll have a dickens of a time ridding yourself of it once it has established itself.

Vigorous and aggressive, it is said that bamboo groves grow so quickly in some climes that if you were to listen inside a quiet grove that you could literally hear its crackling growth. It just takes over.

It would seem that bamboo is as capable of taking root and thriving in a pipe collection as it is in the soil. While it hasn’t started crowding out the rest of my collection, I wonder if it might happen someday. My bamboo and briar companions are among my very favorite pipes. They are like women whose charm, character, and personality combine to make them irresistible - the kind that the longer you look at and touch them, the more beautiful they become.

A particular favorite pipe in my rotation is the little spaghetti bamboo pictured at the top of this post from the American artisan Adam Davidson. Its sandblasted walls, though thin, stay eerily cool and its thin, comfortable bit makes the pipe feel as natural as my very own teeth. My wonderful experience with this pipe led me to purchase both the black bamboo cherrywood and the smooth, bamboo pot pictured below. It may surprise you to know that I haven’t always liked bamboo pipes very much. Early on, I didn’t like them at all.

I remember my first encounters with bamboo-shanked pipes. Their scarred, knobby, and fibrous shank-scapes seemed awkwardly ill-conceived, like somebody tried to graft a cottonwood branch onto a magnolia tree. Worse, the more mesmerizing the briar grains were, the more out-of-place the bamboo seemed. With apologies to George Gobel, bamboo and briar seemed like brown shoes in a world of tuxedos.

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