PICTURES OF PIPES

One of the ways I've been keeping myself occupied is by drawing some of the pipes in my collection. Obviously part of it is mental exercise -- observing light and shade, analysing shape, figuring out proportions -- but it's also fun, and lets me throw unique graphics into my essays on this blog.
This blog is, more or less, an outlet.
Sometimes people read it.


PORTRAITS FROM THE CURRENT ROTATION

The Pipe For Watching Rats In Spofford Alley.

Received as a 'thank you' from Tiberio.

I didn't smoke this for over a decade. Pulled it out recently, and am gradually getting to like it very much.

This one needed some really serious restoration.

Purchased from Grant's on Market Street many years ago.

Something Marty Pulvers had hanging around.

Basically an orphan. Becoming a favourite.

Needed some work. Good smoke.

 First smoked this after grilled pork and rice stick noodles in soup at a place in Chinatown, Autumn nearly a decade ago. Should have smoked it years earlier instead of waiting so long.

 The Tobacco Center is fairly close to where I live. Nicholas, the proprietor, retired and went back home, leaving his cousins to manage the shop.

Another one of the pipes I purchased from Marty Pulvers.

An old classic.

 A restored orphan that needed serious rim work.

 Not my shape. Too Danish, and too pretty. Very good smoke, though. Also needed restoration and rim work.

As well a large number of barely passable pipes, Kaywoodie also made some very high quality items that are dynamite smokes

Another one of the "Chinatown Alleyway" pipes.  Often smoked after having lunch at the Regency or New Hollywood.

After several years, the surface of this pipe just glows. An elegant old exemplar. It really is one of my best smokes.

This is the darker of the two 312s, a walnut stain. It was my Dad's. The lighter one (natural finish) was one of three period Peterson pipes that had a shared aesthetic, the same ex-smoker having owned all three pieces.

There are other pipes in the rotation (and more in boxes in a bookcase), as well as other illustrations. And I think I've gotten better at drawing. That's one "creativity" developed because of shelter-in-place, I suppose, though most people would likely not understand the what and the why of this.

To me, pipes evoke moods and have layers of memory attached; times, people, places. In that sense they are tools, as well as pleasing objects.

There is, of course, also that old-fashioned fragrance.

TOBACCO INDEX


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