Learning Pipe History

[NathanA]

I am hoping that someone can recommend some books, magazines, websites, etc. that can help me learn more about the history of pipes and pipe-making. I am really trying to expand my knowledge base and the only "tobacconist's" around me are of the discount cigarette variety. I have explored pipedia.org as well as the forum here and have found little of what I am looking for. For example, I hear a lot about Danish influence and I want to know what that means; or a lot of discussion is given to pipe shapes and I know nothing about this (pipedia's link to a pipe shape chart is not working); or what exactly does it take to be considered a billiard, and what is a true dublin compared to something that is just dublin-like. In the absence of a mentor or expert near me I am looking for ways to learn more about the craft. I know there are a bunch of books listed on pipedia but I was hoping someone could tell me which ones were best and if there are other sources of info I should be looking for. Thanks everyone.

[Mike Messer]

I, too, am a student of pipemaking, not an authority, but I can help a bit.

A quote from the first link, below, where it all began...
"It is believed that the Mayan people of Central America were among the first pipe smokers several thousand years ago and archaeologists have found pipes dating from around 2,000 B.C."

Some brief History can be found at these links:
British America Tobacco Co.
http://www.bat.com/group/sites/uk__3mnf ... ment&SKN=1

about Danish Handmade Pipemaking (click the "Pipe History" link)
http://www.scandpipes.com/

About Sixten Ivarsson founder of Danish Handmade Pipemaking in about 1950
http://www.danishpipemakers.com/forside ... ixten.html

images, etc. of many kinds of pipes at the Dutch Pipe Museum:
http://www.pijpenkabinet.nl/

[Frank]

http://pipedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

[NathanA]

Thanks for the links. I am looking forward to spending a few hours perusing them for info. Also, I was able to find many of the books listed as references on pipedia at amazon and half.com, used, for some pretty decent prices if anyone is interested.

[Mike Messer]

Exerpt from the book "Tobacco and Americans" by Robert K. Heimann (McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. 1960)
from: http://tobaccodocuments.org/ti/TITX0015329-5606.html

The written history of Americans and of tobacco begins on October 12, 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the beaches of San Salvador in the West Indies. According to the Admiral's journal, published some years afterward, the natives brought fruit, wooden spears, and "certain dried leaves" which gave off a distinct fragrance. The Spanish sailors in Columbus' command welcomed the fruit; the dried leaves they threw away. Three days later, while cruising among the islands, the Admiral found a solitary Indian in a canoe. In addition to bread and water, he carried the same kind of dried leaves and made a great show of offering them to the white strangers in the white-winged vessels. No doubt the Spaniards wondered why the strange leaves were so highly valued. The following month they found out why. Two sailors, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, were dispatched on a three days' reconnaissance acioss Cuba, bearing letters of introduction to the Khan of Cathay. The Indians, they reported, wrapped the dried leaves in palm or maize "in the manner of a musket formed of paper," and after lighting one end inhaled the smoke through the other. To keep them glowing the Indians blew on the lighted ends between puffs, a gesture still common to cigar connoisseurs the world around. One of the two scouts, de Jerez, became a confirmed tobacco smoker, probably the first European to do so. Smoke-filled hemisphere As later voyagers were to discover, the New World was full of confirmed smokers, and had been for hundreds of years. What is more, every form of tobacco consumption-pipe, cigar, cigarette, snuff, chew-had become accepted custom long before the first Spaniards landed.