As pipe collectors, just like in the rest of our existence, we go through phases. Some last longer that others and are thus entitled “collecting focuses”, but this is just a euphemism. Very few collection focuses last throughout one’s entire pipe career and with good cause. To me, it would be a dull experience to collect the exact same thing and only that thing for one’s entire lifetime. Please don’t get me wrong: having a focus = good. But there are few people who never diversify their collection beyond one focus. By diversifying your passion and focusing on new aspects of the pipe hobby, your scope widens and  you are better able to appreciate all facets of this complex obsession.

One of my current phases developed without my even knowing it, like they tend to do. Of the last ten pipes that I have added to my collection in recent months, seven of them have been what are known as sitters.

A sitter is not a shape, really, but rather a characteristic of the shaping of the pipe. As near as I can tell, the best definition for a sitter is a pipe that has a flat portion on the bottom that allows it to stand independently in a upright position without the mouthpiece touching the surface on which it is sitting. That last part is important, as it is the entire point of a sitter; it is able to be set down without the use of a pipe stand and without the button getting dirty. If the button touches the table the pipe is sitting on, it’s not a sitter, it’s just a pipe that hasn’t fallen onto its side.

There are two shapes, as far as I can tell, that have being a sitter built into their shape: the poker and the tankard, which is essentially a churchwarden version of a poker. Many shapes, however, with the creativity of a talented artisan, can be made to be a sitter.

Whenever I notice myself falling into another “focus”, I ask myself why. Why this? Why do I like it?

Being a sitter allows the pipe to be an autonomous piece of art and yet be fully functional. For displaying purposes, most pipes require a stand of some sort, whether it be a pipe rack or a single seat. Sitters, however, do not. They can be displayed anywhere, which is something that I have truly come to appreciate as I have been designing my new office and pipe room. Most of my pipes are constrained to the confines of wherever I can fit a pipe rack. My beautiful sitters, however, are able to grace my desk and bookshelves and anywhere else that I can think of.

Does any of this add to the smoking quality of the sitter? No. Then again, neither does the grain. I like sitters in my capacity as a pipe collector, not a pipe smoker.

Also from an artistic perspective, I like the challenge that creating a beautiful and functional sitter poses to the artisan. Oh, sure, it’s easy to make a pipe that can sit on it’s own: just make a poker. But that’s not the challenge. The challenge it to simultaneously get the most out of the block and the shape and to successfully balance the pipe perfectly, both on the X and Y axis, to allow it to stand.

Another construction challenge involves creating a base wide enough to allow the pipe to weather the surface moving slightly beneath it without it tumbling over. After all, there’s no point in having a sitter that collapses every time a mouse walks by the shelf on which it stands. This has to be accomplished without make the pipe look bulky or bottom heavy.

As a consequence of this added challenge, there are often unique and beautiful creations that would never have been thought of otherwise. Everyone knows the saying that competition breeds excellence. In this case, the artisan is competing against gravity and the grain. What might have originally been a run-of-the-mill Dublin becomes an eye-catching and phenomenal piece, as can be seen by looking at this piece by Jonas Rosengren, a Speeding Dublin Sitter.

In general, creating a sitter makes the process of creating pipe a beautiful combination of math and art, even more than it usually is.

As a rule, designing a pipe is already highly mathematical. When you add in the complication of making the pipe sit independently, it heightens the experience and adds in many factors, such as balance on two axes. Also, the angle of the stem and cant of the bowl no longer simply concern shaping and smoking qualities, but also have to do with the balance of the pipe, while still having to be comfortable and functional.

I like it when an artisan deliberately challenges himself. Being content with one’s work leads to atrophy, while turning the volume up to 11, so to speak, leads to incredible work such as those pictured throughout this piece. After all, looking as these beautiful specimens, who could argue with the attractiveness of a well-executed sitter?

Cheers, friends!

P.S. If you know why the title of this piece made me think of one of my favorite SNL episodes, you get a cookie.

Driving through the changing autumn leaves in Tennessee was like passing through a cool fireplace: vibrant shades of red and yellow and orange accompanied a refreshing fall breeze. The experience was coated by a film of anticipation.

Almost two months ago, I found myself doing one of the boldest, most life-changing actions in which I had ever partaken: I found myself down on one knee during the mid-day joust at the St. Louis Renaissance Faire in a full kilt, asking my girlfriend to marry me. The silly girl said yes, luckily enough for me. Naturally, this gave me pause to stop and reflect upon the many aspects of our relationship, but the one that I would specifically like to share with you is, without surprise, relating to pipes.

I remember that pipes used to be a point of slight contention between me and my fiance’ when we first started going out. Lauren came from a family that smoked cigarettes heavily and had come to despise them. Perhaps because of the success of the anti-tobacco propaganda, she had come to associate all tobacco products with cigarettes, as a lot of people do. Thus, because of the negative impact that cigarettes had on her family, she was concerned when she found out about my love for pipes.

Her fear concerned me as well, as I didn’t want to give up pipes, though I didn’t want to cause her grief. Naturally, smoking my pipes would have been the one to go if it had to, but I took this as an opportunity for discussion. I talked with her about the medical differences between pipes and cigarettes and let her know exactly why I love pipes as much as I do. I discussed at great length the joy that pipes bring into my life, the simple pleasure found in a quiet moment of reflection, and so on.

After hearing the differences, including the fact that pipes are smoked less frequently (typically) than cigarettes and are usually not inhaled into the lunges, she completely changed her tunes. She encouraged my hobby and has done her best to learn more about pipes because she knows how much they are a part of my life. There is little more touching to me than when I light up a blend around her and I see her pause, sniff the air, and identify it as an English or a Virginia.

Recently, Lauren did something that revealed her radical change in opinion of pipes.

We were attending a staff holiday party for the pub where we work and were both having a great time. It was a cold evening in December, but the heating lamps and fire pits made the back patio quite pleasant. Since the majority of the staff and friends of the staff were cigarette smokers, the majority of people spent their time on the patio, drinking and smoking and having a good time.

Along with my bottle of mead, one of my favorite drinks, I brought my IMP meerschaum and a bowl’s worth of Boswell’s Christmas Cookie.

When I pulled my pipe out, Phoebe, a server at the pub, said in her too-adorable British accent, “That looks like a whale bone!”

I kind of agree with her. It is a freehand design with a plateau-style finish at the top, which will look absolutely fantastic once it starts to color further. It was a present from my brother two Christmases ago and it has been my go-to meerschaum ever since.

Once I settled in by one of the heating lamps, with Lauren by my side, I lit up and relaxed. I truly adore Boswell’s Christmas Cookie, as you might have noticed with how frequently I have mentioned it. To me, it is absolutely the perfect aromatic, with nothing too overwhelming, but still perfectly light and sweet. It both tastes and smells like an oatmeal raisin cookie.

Once I had been puffing for a little while, I asked Lauren how it smelled. Being someone who is still allowed and able to smoke indoors, I find her opinion on the aroma of a given tobacco to be one of the biggest factors of when I choose to smoke what. There are certain ‘baccies that I reserve strictly for smoking indoors, as I know that she will like them. Mac Baren’s Honey and Chocolate comes to mind.

She heartily approved of the room note — who wouldn’t?

A couple of minutes later, as I slowly exhaled a wisp of smoke, I looked over to her and smiled. She smiled back and then made a strange face.

It looked like she was trying to suck on a straw that wasn’t there. I cocked an eyebrow, channeling Spock.

Using her lips to gesticulate, an impressive task while still having them pursed, she motioned towards my pipe.

I couldn’t believe it. Surely, she didn’t mean…

“You want to try?” I asked hesitantly. I felt like a child approaching a deer, not wanting to move too eagerly for fear of disturbing it.

She nodded.

Astonished, I handed her my pipe, which she delicately held by the stem like she had seen me do in an attempt to not get grime on the meerschaum itself.

She took the slightest of puffs and let it drift out of her mouth. It was gorgeous.

Smiling as a trail of smoke still drifted from her lips, she took another puff and handed the pipe back to me.

This continued through the evening, with me taking five puffs or so and then handing it back to her.

I cannot express how much this event meant to me. It felt like she had finally fully embraced a part of me that I had always been slightly afraid would offend her. It wasn’t until a year-and-a-half into our relationship that she saw me actually smoke for the first time.

Since that night, Lauren has treated my pipes like an extension of who I am, showing them respect and deep interest. She has even spontaneously suggested that I smoke a pipe. I’m not sure if it was because she thought I was stressed, but I think it was just because she knows how much I enjoy it.

It is amazing how much of a difference the acceptance and encouragement of my loved ones make in my ability to enjoy my pipes. I have never been one whose actions have been dictated by the whims of others, but those who get close enough to me to earn the title “loved ones” are people that I work hard at making happy.

This Spring, we both attended the Chicago Pipe Show and had an amazing time. We met fantastic people from all over the world, saw some of the most stunning pipes, and got to visit with friends over tobacco, gin-and-tonics, and laughter. While there, Lauren decided that she wanted to acquire a pipe for herself. I had purchased her a beautiful meerschaum pipe a month or so before, as I knew that it would be one that she loved — and she did — but she had found herself overcome with the same itch that assaults me every time Nick releases an update of pipes.

After browsing for some time, she decided that she had four criteria for a new pipe: she want it to be small, have bamboo, be black, and have a sandblasted finish. This was fairly specific, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to find one.

While waiting for a chance to speak with Hiroyuki Tokutomi,  I spied a pipe on the table from the Tokutomi Pipe Company that fit all of the qualities that Lauren requested. It was perfect and I snapped it up before anyone else had the chance.

Calling Lauren down from her room to the show floor, I presented her new pipe and watched her face light up. She carried the pipe around with her for the rest of the show, bragging about it to anyone that she could, and breaking it in with a bowl of McClelland’s Dominican Glory Maduro.

I know that Lauren’s initial resistance to my pipes was out of concern for my health. Now, after she has learned more about pipes, she sees them for what they are and embraces them for how happy they make me (not that they make me happier than her, of course!).

That’s the thing about loved ones. They are happy if you are happy. That’s why they are loved ones.

I know that I have already written far too much about the Chicago Pipe Show, but that is mostly because it is such a massive gathering that it would take me until the next show to fully explicate the totality of the event. One thing is without question about the show, as I am sure is true about almost all other pipe events: one of the best parts is getting the chance to meet new and incredible people there.

During the banquet on the Friday evening of the show, Lauren, Dustin, and I were joined by five men from Sweden. Two of the men were Martin and Anders of Vollmer & Nilsson, while two others were high end collectors. The fifth man, and the youngest, was named Jonas. He was extremely affable from the moment we met him, leaning across the table to shake hands, tell a joke, and let out a big laugh. From that moment on, we spent a great deal of time with Jonas Rosengren.

I had actually seen him for a couple of moments earlier that Friday at the show’s Smoke and Swap event. I was walking up and down the aisles, snapping as many photos as possible for the several stories that I was to be writing about the show. When I passed Jonas’s small table, I had to stop and look at the few pipes that he had available. Two of them were perfectly spherical, not counting the stem, of course, and refused to let my gaze go anywhere else. I then recalled seeing Jonas the night before, though I had no idea who he was at the time. I saw him smoking one of those spherical pipes and showing it to another pipe maker, who looked at it with a combination of skepticism, awe, and amazement. Now that I had a chance to look closer at these pipes, I understood why.

These pipes are Jonas’s take on the classic calabash. The top part pops out, revealing an expansion chamber inside. Jonas had another calabash design on his table that was in the shape of a volcano, which sold very quickly. The customer let him take a couple of puffs from it once it was bought, as Jonas had never gotten the chance to try it out before. He then leaned over to me and whispered, “This shape smokes even cooler than the ball calabash. I didn’t think that was possible.”

These ball calabashes have been a smash hit, to say the least. Within 72 hours of going live on Quality Briar, all of Jonas’s pipes were sold out and he already had at least two threads about him on pipe forums. I must admit, I couldn’t resist getting one of my own after eyeballing it for the whole weekend at the Chicago Show.

I asked Jonas where he got the idea for this take on the calabash: “From my head, I guess?” Jonas is never one to say anything without a joke and a smile. “I know that some makers have a shape that is their own, like Geiger’s logo pipe, and I wanted something that I haven’t seen before and made the spherical pipe. Then I realized that some similar been made before but not as a calabash so I tried that and I think that I succeed with the challenge.” Read more