Pipe Tobaccos

The pipe tobacco recipes found in Victorian-era trade manuals, the era's adulteration problem, and the first official inspection regulations that problem gave rise to.

An essay comparing the Syrian and Cypriot types of Latakia, signed by G.L. Pease and now a classic in the pipe community, along with the facts underlying it.

A listing of American pipe manufacturers and distributors compiled by S. Paul Jung in 1991, based on city and trade directories held at the Library of Congress. It covers roughly 1860 to 1930.

A family of pipe tobaccos in which flavors and scents outside tobacco itself — vanilla, cherry, caramel — are added. Aromatics are considered to make up the largest share of pipe tobacco sales worldwide.

A blend family dominated by Latakia and oriental tobaccos, named after the legendary Balkan Sobranie mixture. Its boundary with the English blend is still debated in the pipe world.

An American-origin tobacco variety that is air-cured, low in sugar, and high in nicotine. With a leaf structure that holds flavors very well, it is considered the foundation leaf of aromatic blends and the American pipe tradition.

The two-stage process that gives pipe tobacco its taste and scent: casing, which works deep into the leaf, and topping, applied to the surface just before packaging.

Not a tobacco variety but a processing method built on steam, pressure, and fermentation. It turns Virginia or Burley leaf into a soft, sweet, dark-colored blending component.

How small cardboard cards inserted into cigarette packs as stiffeners turned into collectible objects, and the place of pipe-themed series within these sets.

The collective name for the Burley-based classic pipe tobaccos synonymous with US drugstore and supermarket shelves. Prince Albert, Carter Hall, Half and Half, and Captain Black are the family's best-known examples.

A dark American tobacco variety cured with oak and hickory smoke in closed barns. It is used as a component that adds strength and a smoky note to pipe blends.

The London firm Alfred Dunhill's relationship with the Cuban cigar goes back to the start of the twentieth century. A cigar line bearing the Dunhill name itself, however, did not appear until the mid-1980s, and it closed within a decade.

A classic blend family built from Latakia, oriental tobaccos, and Virginia, prepared without added artificial flavoring. Its smoky, layered character makes it one of the most established categories in the pipe world.

A survey of pipe blends defined by Oriental leaf: the two main branches, with and without Latakia, their best-known examples, and the gap left by discontinued names.

A rundown of classic blends built around Virginia leaf: a family tree stretching from straight Virginias to Kentucky-, Perique-, and Oriental-enriched branches.

A small-leaved, sun-cured oriental tobacco from the Aegean region. With its high sugar and low nicotine, it is considered a softening, sweetening element in blends.

English novelist, playwright, and essayist J. B. Priestley (1894-1984) made the pipe part of his public identity and was one of the rare literary figures to write about tobacco. His archive in Bradford preserves more than seventy of his pipes.

A pipe tobacco tradition carried on for two centuries in the town of Kendal in northwestern England, top-flavored with floral, soap-like essences.

An oriental tobacco that is sun-dried and then smoke-cured over aromatic wood and scrub for weeks. Its smoky, leathery, spiced notes make it the signature component of English blends.

The pressed-tobacco tradition, today known as navy flake, that arose from sailors' habit of binding tobacco with rope and pressure and moistening it with rum or molasses.

The shared name for small-leaved, sun-cured tobacco varieties with high aroma. Considered the core flavoring tobacco of English and Balkan pipe blends.

A rare tobacco from Louisiana's St. James Parish, pressure-fermented in its own juices inside oak barrels. Its peppery, dried-fruit character has earned it the title "the black pepper of blends."

The story of Peter Stokkebye, third-generation representative of a Danish tobacco family founded in Odense in 1882. This entry also covers the blender's unsuccessful venture into the tobacco-free "Free" cigarette in the early 1980s, alongside the pipe blends and shag-cut tobaccos for which he is known.

Ben Rapaport's February 2023 essay investigates who is granted the label "expert" in pipes and tobacco, and by what criterion. It sets the nameless experts of promotional language against the handful of names the community actually calls by name.

The diameter and depth of a pipe's bowl determine how much tobacco a single packing holds, how long the smoke lasts, and how much the bowl tends to heat up. This entry covers the archaeological origins of the measurement, its definitions, and why it has never been tied to a standard.

Walking sticks with a pipe bowl, mouthpiece, tobacco, snuff, or matches hidden in their shaft or handle. A forgotten accessory of 19th-century Europe, today a subject of collecting.

The path from hobby to expertise in pipe collecting: the criterion that separates a collection from a mere pile, history's great collectors, and the fact that this pursuit still lacks a settled name of its own.

How tobacco prepared for smoking in a pipe differs from cigarette tobacco, the core leaf varieties that make up a blend, the stages of processing, and the cut styles found on the market.

The pipe records preserved in trade journals, consular reports, and industrial encyclopedias from the mid-19th century to the first quarter of the 20th; where this body of material can be trusted, and where it should be read with caution.

Pressed tobaccos is the shared name for the forms obtained by holding leaf under pressure and molding it over a long period.

How pipe and tobacco literature out of print for a century has returned to circulation through print-on-demand, and where these reprints can be trusted and where they should be treated with caution.

Archives, private collections, and digital document libraries documenting the history of the tobacco and pipe industry in the United States and Britain; what they offer researchers and where they fall short.

The course of the print tradition that portrayed the pipe smoker as a ridiculous, disheveled, exaggerated figure, running from Flemish tavern scenes to the golden age of British caricature and 19th-century lithography.

A small one-man American workshop run by Eric Weaver in the town of Washburn, Wisconsin, producing a few dozen pipes a year.

Sot weed was a disparaging name attached to the tobacco plant; little ladell was a description of the implement's shape used before the word "pipe" took hold. Both remain confined to 16th-18th century texts.

Fred J. Hanna's essay comparing pipe tobacco tasting to the method of wine tasting; grouping the variables that determine taste under the headings of tobacco, pipe, and smoker.

The circulation of pipe and tobacco books across languages: nearly a century of translation traffic, multilingual classics, bilingual museum and workshop books, and the uneven direction this traffic takes.

An entry examining how pipe packing and smoking techniques came to form a shared vocabulary, whose names became attached to known methods, and the influence of competitive smoking on this body of knowledge.

How pipe and tobacco literature, which found a place in major publishers' catalogs in the mid-twentieth century, turned over the last fifty years into books printed at the author's own expense, and what this means for readers and researchers.

The history of an accessory family running from pocket horn boxes to the Delft jars on the tobacconist's shelf, from Bohemia's figural vessels to mass-produced pocket tins. Objects that have today lost their function and passed into the realm of collecting.

New York's jewelry and silver house Tiffany & Company sold, for many years, cases, lighters, amber mouthpieces, and even a handful of pipes under the heading of what it called "fancy goods." Trademark records and collection catalogs make it possible to trace this small line.

The practice of storing pipe tobacco in airtight containers for years to let its flavor mature. It gives especially pronounced results with Virginia-heavy blends.

Describes the four basic curing methods that turn fresh tobacco leaf into a smokable form, and which tobacco variety each is paired with.

The cuts that define the sales forms of pipe tobacco — ribbon, flake, plug, and rope — affect nearly every aspect of the smoking experience, from burn speed to flavor intensity.

An American institution founded in 1996 by Jorge Armenteros, offering online education and certification in tobacco retailing and product knowledge.

The current shape of the pipe tobacco market, caught between the access the internet has opened up, closing blenders, and tightening regulation.

Some old Dunhill tobacco tins bear the words "Hergestellt in Deutschland" on the bottom. These tins are not fakes — they are German versions produced under license by the Hamburg firm Joh. Wilh. von Eicken.

The most widely grown pipe tobacco type in the world. Its high natural sugar content gives it sweet, grassy, and citrus-like flavors, and it forms the backbone of most blends.

A classic blend family in which Virginia tobacco is spiced with a small amount of Louisiana-grown Perique; known for its sweet-sour balance and its aptitude for aging.

The problem they try to solve is a familiar one: a list of jars in a cellar, the measurement data of a collection, or hundreds of smoking notes can become inaccessible once the program used to record them is abandoned or loses support.

An Oriental leaf named after the Ottoman-era town of Yenice in Rumelia, grown in the Xanthi basin. Famous through blends such as Balkan Sobranie, it is no longer available today as a separate commercial class.