Briar Calabash Shapes: the Top Bowl vs. Sunken Cup Distinction

Briar calabash shapes cover a broad family that recreates, in a single piece of wood, the silhouette of the two-piece gourd pipe. The two ends of the family don't much resemble one another: in one, the bowl sits as a separate mass above the body; in the other, the bowl mouth is cut flush with the body. What actually qualifies a pipe as a calabash is, for this reason, a subject collectors return to regularly.

The Criterion: Where the Bowl Sits on the Gourd Pipe

The basis of the distinction is the structure of the calabash pipe itself. The 1909 Circular No. 41 that David Fairchild and G. N. Collins prepared for the US Department of Agriculture describes step by step the cultivation of the South African pipe gourd (Lagenaria): while the neck is still soft it is bent to the desired angle with stakes fixed into perforated boards, once dried and hardened the wide end is cut off, the bowl is set in place with plaster mortar, and the exposed surface of the mortar is wrapped in a thin strip of cork. The pipe plate in the same publication shows the meerschaum bowl seated on the body at one of two possible heights. If the bowl is set into the neck, leaving the gourd's outer profile untouched, it counts as a sunken cup; if it caps the gourd like a hood and overhangs the edges, it counts as a top bowl. Early gourd pipes are also known in which the sunken cup was covered with a silver lid.