Antique and Vintage Pipes
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Like a Fine Tobacco, the Pipe Smoking Revival Has Been a Slow Burn
By Kevin Smokler — I rarely saw my grandfather with a pipe. My mother didn't like him smoking around us kids, and he respected that. When he passed away, my family donated his pipes, thinking no one wanted them—which at the time was true. It would be three more years before a chance meeting with a friend at his favorite tobacco shop turned me, a few weeks after my 35th birthday, into a pipe smoker. “A pipe fundamentally is piece of wood with a hole and a mouthpiece stuck in it. But you are talking about an...
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Gloriously Grotesque 19th-Century Pipes
By Ben Marks — The meerschaum pipes carved in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century are among the most bizarre and improbable concoctions in decorative art. Some feature bowls made from the heads of historical figures like Napoleon while others sport the likenesses of literary characters such as Sir Dagonet, King Arthur’s much-abused jester (above). There are pipes based on nursery rhymes, others depicting men on horseback, and lots of naked ladies, ranging from classical nudes positioned at the...
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Where There's Smoke There's a Vintage Cigarette Lighter
By Maribeth Keane — At the very beginning, my interest in lighters was about the mechanism. I had my first lighter when I was 14. I saved up my nickels and dimes. I grew up in Oakland, and bought my first cigarette lighter because I thought it was way cool. I didn’t smoke and I didn’t set fire to things. I just thought the lighter was really a beautiful piece of equipment and the whole idea of being able to push down your thumb and get a flame just really caught my fancy. I was attracted to the function of...
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Collecting Vintage Cigarette Lighters
By Eric Beeson — Cigarette lighter collecting is a hobby that never gets boring. Just by browsing eBay auctions for ten minutes, for example, I recently found a lighter shaped like a lion’s head, one made of jade and gold, and an electric lighter in the shape of a woman’s face that hangs on the wall. A flame we can carry in our pockets is something that we take for granted, but it was much harder to make fire in earlier times. The match wasn’t invented until about 1805, and early matches were expensive...