Calabash Pipe

The calabash pipe is a two-piece pipe consisting of a curved body made from a dried gourd, topped by a removable meerschaum bowl insert that seats into the gourd's wide end. Tobacco burns only in the bowl insert; because the smoke expands and cools in the large cavity beneath it, the calabash is known for one of the coolest, driest smokes among pipes.

Over time the word has also come to describe a silhouette independent of material, which is why calabash is discussed both among pipe bowl materials and among classic pipe shapes.

Origin and History

The gourd is one of Africa's oldest cultivated plants. Once European traders brought tobacco to Southern Africa, the Khoikhoi people began making pipes from gourds, coating the inner surface with clay to keep it from burning. The form known today, however, was born during the Second Boer War (1899-1902): as the war disrupted maritime trade and made briar scarce, a meerschaum bowl and mouthpiece were added to the gourd body. This combination is usually credited to a dealer named H.L. Blatter. When the war ended, British officers and soldiers are said to have carried their calabashes back to Britain; commercial exports to England began around 1903. It's also recorded that during the 1906-1910 shortage of meerschaum supply, the calabash was promoted in the American market as an alternative to meerschaum.

The calabash's characteristic curve is set not in a factory but in the field: the growing gourd is staked down and forced to bend as it grows; once mature, it is harvested, hollowed out, cleaned, and dried.