Pipe Accessories

Pipe accessories is the name given to the full range of auxiliary items that fall outside the pipe and the tobacco itself. At one end of this broad set sit a handful of pieces genuinely required for daily use; at the other end are individually crafted, signed items that are themselves objects of collecting. Accessories make up a large branch of tobacciana, the broader field of tobacco-related collecting.

Lighting Tools

The oldest and simplest solution is the wooden match; those who prefer it usually cite the odor left behind by burning liquid fuel as their reason. A match is not entirely odorless either, which is why smokers wait for the sulfur on the match head to burn off before bringing the flame to the tobacco. Users of liquid-fuel lighters have developed a similar habit of waiting.

The technical basis of the lighter rests on ferrocerium, the spark-producing alloy known as flint, developed by Carl Auer von Welsbach in 1903. A few milestones stand out in brand history: Dunhill's Unique, released in 1924, is considered the first one-handed lighter; Colibri, founded by Julius Lowenthal in 1928, introduced piezoelectric ignition in 1961; and Zippo, founded by George G. Blaisdell in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1932, produced its first lighter the following year. Zippo has a model made specifically for pipes; it differs from the standard model in having a hole in the side of the windscreen. This hole lets the flame be drawn into the bowl with a draw. Whether naphtha-based fuel taints the smoke with odor is still debated. Records also note that the Nimrod Pipe Lighter, the Nimrod Commander, and the Beattie Jet Lighter were among the main pre-butane pipe lighters on the American market.

In the 1950s, fuel across the industry shifted from naphtha to butane, which offered both a more controlled flame and less odor. The best known of the butane pipe lighters is the Old Boy line from the Japanese maker IM Corona, whose own history traces its founding back to 1933. The Old Boy retains the old-style flint-and-wheel mechanism despite the change in fuel. Its flame is directed to the side at roughly a ninety-degree angle rather than straight up, so the lighter does not need to be tilted to light the bowl. A small piece attached to its body doubles as both a tamper and a cleaning rod. Kiribi is another maker that has adopted the same side-flame principle and flint mechanism. Jet or torch lighters designed for cigars, by contrast, are not used with pipes: their blue flames, which burn at much higher temperatures, are considered capable of causing lasting damage to the bowl.