Pipe Clubs

Pipe clubs are voluntary communities where pipe smokers and collectors gather at regular intervals. Most are founded at the scale of a city or region, and run on a written charter with an elected leadership. Above the local clubs sit national federations, and above those, an international coordinating body; this three-tier structure forms the community's present-day organised face. For the historical predecessors of these clubs, see the History of Pipe Clubs entry.

How a Local Club Works

A typical club meets once or twice a month. The usual content of meetings is blend tasting, examining pipes and stamps, a talk on history or collecting, and swapping experience. Membership ranges from a few dozen to a few hundred. Founded on 23 February 1970, the Pipe Club of London is an early example in that most of the forty-five members who attended its founding meeting had ties to the pipe and tobacco trade; its first chairman was Rupert Davies, the actor who played Maigret on the BBC. The club was originally founded under the umbrella of the Pipe Club of Great Britain, and continued to operate independently after that umbrella organisation dissolved at the end of 1978.

Some clubs turn into show organisers over time. The Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club, formed from the merger of two separate groups on Chicago's north and south sides in the late 1980s and registered as a nonprofit in 1995, held its first show in 1996. This event's history is covered in the Frank Burla entry. In North America, a group founded in 1993 under the name Ohio Pipe Collectors took the name North American Society of Pipe Collectors in 1997, once its membership had spread to twenty-eight states and Canada.