So much more than just a pipe dream
Sherlock Holmes solved his cases while puffing on one, and here we look at the history of his famous pipe
IGAVE up smoking years ago, but I bought a pipe last weekend. At £3, I couldn’t resist it. I’ve seen plenty of briars with bowls carved to represent animals and people, but I’ve never seen one that looks like a man wearing a top hat.
I was baffled at first. The hat was jammed so tight on the bowl it wouldn’t budge. Where does the tobacco go and how do you smoke the thing?
Perseverance paid: a little brute force freed the jam and all became obvious. The pipe had been used, but only lightly, and I suspect the tight fit between hat and pipe was why they had stayed together over the years where other similar examples had become separated and the hat lost.
It became only the second pipe
I’ve ever purchased and started me reminiscing. I bought my first pipe aged around 12 or 13 and was congratulated on my choice by my veteran pipe-smoking uncle.
Sadly, when he told my mother, her reaction was less enthusiastic. She took it from me immediately and handed it over to my betrayer.
Little did I realise at the time but I had purchased a Peterson, a fine briar with a wide, hallmarked silver ring joining the mouthpiece to the body. It was a classic, made by a company that continues today.
German immigrant brothers Friedrich and Heinrich Kapp founded their tobacconist’s shop in Grafton Street, Dublin, in 1865.
Charles Peterson, a Latvian immigrant, joined them in the same year with the promise that his talent as a master pipe craftsmen would have discerning smokers beating a path to their door.
In 1890, he invented a pipe with a small reservoir inside known as the “dry system body”, intended to collect moisture for a drier, cooler smoke, while the mouthpiece – the “Peterson-Lip” – patented in 1898, was designed to take the smoke away from the user’s tongue.
Soon politicians, business leaders, members of the clergy, armed forces, sportsmen, artists and writers were all sporting Peterson “System” pipes.
Indeed, Conan Doyle gave his Sherlock Holmes a curve-stemmed Peterson, while the advertising slogan writers dubbed them the
“thinking man’s smoke”.
The company still sells pipes worldwide, the US its best customer and both Peterson’s designs remain in production. Its vintage products are now covetable collectors’ items and the memory that I bought one as a boy still gives me satisfaction.
The history of smoking goes back to around 5,000 BC, long before 1586 when Sir Walter Raleigh famously had a bucket of water thrown over him by his servant seeing him smoking a pipe for the first time.
Spanish and Portuguese sailors were probably first to see natives smoking Nicotiana tabacum and what was first thought to be a medicinal aid quickly became a cash crop on the Continent.
When Raleigh persuaded Queen Elizabeth to try smoking Virginian tobacco in 1600, her court dutifully followed and the general populace copied the craze to the point where James I felt compelled to write “A Counterblaste to Tobacco” in 1604.
In it he described the habit as a “custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless’.
The rest, as they say, is history. What is undisputable, though, is the wealth of collectors’ items the habit – loathsome or otherwise – has created. Some still so common you might find them while digging your vegetable patch.
By the end of the 17th century, most towns and cities in England boasted at least one clay pipe maker and millions were produced for use at home and for export.
They range from the long and elegant types, intended to give a cooler smoke and, as tradition has it, favoured by churchwardens, to those of particular historical interest decorated with likenesses of the famous, such as Disraeli, Gladstone and Queen Victoria – the latter specially amusing since she banned smoking within the precincts of Windsor Castle.
Sadly, the fragility of clay pipes means they were easily broken. However, their cheapness meant they could be discarded without too much concern, thrown out with the rest of the domestic rubbish, to be discovered later by gardeners, bottle diggers and metal detectorists.
Perfect examples can still be found at prices between £10-£25, and they make great bubble-blowing toys for kids, but deeper pockets might prefer a collection of pipes carved from a stone called meerschaum, a German word which means “foam of the sea”.
For the technical, the creamywhite and extremely soft mineral is hydrous silicate of magnesium, which is found in bands of strata, much like the clay in your garden. Unlike clay pipes, though, you won’t find any should you start digging. The main source of the mineral is Turkey.
Key to the success of meerschaum is the ease with which it can be shaped and carved. Note the present tense, the industry still exists and new meerschaums can still be bought in the shops.
Don’t be afraid of being duped out of your cash by a modern reproduction; though. Pipes produced between 1820-1900, the period of most interest to collectors, feature carving of the highest quality that will never be repeated.
Favourite subjects included Gainsborough-type voluptuous ladies; mermaids; actresses; birds and animals; macabre skull and crossbones and skeletons.
Once carved, the pipe was polished with sandpaper, pumice and French chalk, the final shine made possible following immersion in hot wax.
The usual mouthpiece for a meerschaum was fashioned from amber, a fossil resin found notably on the Baltic coast of Prussia and also used to make jewellery.
Like cheap and cheerful clay pipes, however, their drawback was extreme fragility. Generally, they were fitted in plush-lined leather cases to help protect them and this added to their luxury appeal in fashionable Victorian smoking circles.
Today’s connoisseur collectors demand total absence of damage and perfect colouring that, like patination on old oak furniture, comes with age.
A meerschaum pipe is creamy coloured when it leaves its maker; chemicals it contains combine with the wax polish when it is smoked to turn it a rich orange-brown colour.
Examples with narrow, sometimes elongated bowls were intended as cheroot holders. Prices start from around £40 and can rise to five figures or more, depending on the intricacy of the carving.