Corncob Pipe

The corncob pipe is a pipe type whose bowl is turned from dried corncob. Identified closely with American pipe-smoking, it is counted among the lightest and plainest of pipe bowl materials, yet thanks to its dry, cool smoke it has earned a lasting place among both beginners and experienced smokers alike.

History

The history of mass-produced corncob pipes begins in 1869 in the town of Washington, Missouri. As the story goes, a local farmer brought a corncob pipe he had whittled himself to Henry Tibbe, a Dutch immigrant carpenter, and asked him to turn a neater one on his lathe; Tibbe soon turned the job into regular pipe production. In 1878 Tibbe patented a method of applying a plaster-based coating to the outside of the corncob bowl that made the pipe fire-resistant; the recipe for the mixture is still kept partly secret today.

Tibbe likened the cool smoke of his light, porous corncob pipes to the expensive meerschaum pipes of the era and named his product "Missouri Meerschaum"; the business incorporated under this name in 1907. Detailed in the Missouri Meerschaum entry, the company is the sole survivor of about a dozen corncob pipe factories that once operated around the town in 1925; Washington is still known as the "Corncob Pipe Capital of the World."