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.

Sunken Cup and Bell Bodies

In briar, the sunken-cup interpretation is achieved by applying a flat cut to the mouth of a body that imitates the gourd's curve; the bowl doesn't read as a separate piece from outside. Castello's shape 49 is the most frequently cited example of this group. Some Brebbia models fall into the same line; a few curved calabashes from Barling, a maker mostly known for straight pipes, are also counted here.

A subgroup of the family is the "bell" shape, where the body flares outward toward the bowl mouth: the top line is still cut flat, but the sides widen upward. Peterson's XL05 shape is the most often cited representative of this form; Dunhill, Ferndown, and Sasieni have also produced bell interpretations. Degree of curve falls outside the criterion: although calabash brings to mind a deeply curved silhouette, straight or slightly curved examples belong to the same family. Stanwell's well-known calabash shape is recorded as a design by Jess Chonowitsch and is only lightly curved.

Top Bowl Interpretations

On the top-bowl side, pipes are distinguished not by shape but by the route taken to reach that shape. Three basic solutions are known.

• Carved from a single block. The impression of an overhanging bowl is cut from the same briar piece as the body. The calabashes in Ser Jacopo's Picta series are the best-known example of this route; Ardor, Rinaldo, and Butz-Choquin work in a similar way.

• Glued-on cap. A separate cap is fixed to the body. Teddy Knudsen's boxwood-capped calabashes are the best-known example of this technique; the cap may also be briar, olivewood, or acrylic. Cavicchi and Il Ceppo follow a similar path.

• Detachable bowl. The bowl sits as an independent piece atop the body, echoing the two-piece construction of the gourd pipe in a different material. Some Ascorti models belong to this group.

Where the Term Stands

The distinction doesn't promise sharp boundaries. Some models, such as Ashton's LX Sovereign, carry features of both groups at once: the body widens upward while the top of the bowl is finished domed rather than flat. The top bowl / sunken cup / bell / straight distinction was put forward as a discussion proposal by Fred Heim in The Pipe Collector, the bulletin of the American pipe collectors' association NASPC. Since there's no central classification authority for pipe shapes, these terms are not treated as an industry standard; even so, they are credited with making it easier to describe the differences within the calabash family on a historical basis.