Gutta-Percha and Redmanol

Gutta-percha and Redmanol are two materials that were tried in pipe mouthpiece (stem) making and have since both been abandoned. There's no chemical kinship between them: one is a plant-derived thermoplastic drawn from Southeast Asian trees, the other an early product of the American plastics industry, a synthetic resin. What they share is that both were put forward as replacements for amber and hardened rubber, and neither one lasted. Both appear mostly in pipes with briar bowls, as well as in cigar and cigarette holders.

What Gutta-Percha Is

Gutta-percha is obtained by refining and coagulating the latex of trees of the genus Palaquium, in the family Sapotaceae; the name comes from Malay. It softens when heated and hardens on cooling, holding the shape it's given; unlike rubber, it doesn't spring back. Being moldable made it a sought-after raw material in 19th-century industry. Insulation for submarine telegraph cables, root-canal fillings in dentistry, and golf balls known as "gutties" are its best-known uses.

The first person in Europe to study the material was John Tradescant, who brought a sample from the Far East in 1656 and named it "mazer wood." Practical use came two centuries later, and after the physician William Montgomerie, serving in British India, recognized the material's medical value, the Royal Society of Arts awarded him a gold medal in 1843.

Gutta-Percha in the Mouthpiece

Exactly when the material entered pipe making is not documented. According to English patent abstracts, an 1860 application (Joseph Jobin and Auguste Boll) proposes using vulcanized rubber or gutta-percha at the tip end of the mouthpiece. Another application from 1868 (Lorkin) describes a spiral tube that cools the smoke along its length, ending in a gutta-percha tip; the rationale given is that hard materials like amber and bone wear down the teeth. Tobacco pouches were also made of gutta-percha in the same years.

Even so, the material never gained standing as a mouthpiece. A recurring complaint in period writing is that it spoiled the taste of the tobacco. Because its appearance closely resembled hardened rubber, it was recommended that the two be told apart by checking whether it left a salty taste in the mouth. Once vulcanite and ebonite became widespread, gutta-percha was pushed out of the mouthpiece.

The Search for Amber, and Redmanol

20. At the start of the century, the most prized mouthpiece material was amber; but it was an expensive import and broke easily. The first substitute was bakelite, developed by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in Yonkers, New York, in 1907, with the patent granted in 1909: the first fully synthetic resin, produced from the reaction of phenol with formaldehyde, and one that couldn't be reshaped by heat once set. Cast bakelite was worked as "artificial amber" into mouthpieces, cigarette holders, and jewelry.

Redmanol is the second contender for the same market. Canadian chemist Lawrence V. Redman (1880-1946) founded the Redmanol Chemical Products Company in 1913 with the backing of Chicago furniture manufacturer S. Karpen & Bros. According to a 1926 chemistry journal article, Redmanol was produced using formin instead of formaldehyde, yielding a clear, amber-colored, semi-translucent mass; its appeal in a mouthpiece came from this translucency. Records show M. Linkman & Co. and Reiss Bros. (Chicago), S. M. Frank & Co. and L. & H. Stern (New York), and Premier Briar Pipe Co. (New Jersey) among the manufacturers using Redmanol mouthpieces starting in 1919; it's also noted that Peterson used it on some of its briar models.

The Two Names Blur, and the End

Following patent suits that were decided in Baekeland's favor, General Bakelite, Condensite, and Redmanol merged in 1922 under the Bakelite Corporation umbrella; Redman became vice president and director of research at the new company. Production continued, but because the two names were advertised side by side, collectors today have trouble telling red bakelite apart from Redmanol. The trade press of the period objected to this marketing language, writing that phenol-based amber imitations lost their color under light. Records indicate both materials fell out of favor in the period stretching from the late 1930s to the early 1940s; brittleness, along with the cost and difficulty of production, are cited as the main reasons. The materials used in mouthpieces today are covered in the article on mouthpiece materials.