Poker and Cherrywood

Poker and Cherrywood are two shapes that grow out of a shared structural idea: the bottom of the bowl is flattened, so the pipe stands on a table or stand without any support. Any pipe with this feature is broadly known among enthusiasts as a "sitter" pipe; Poker and Cherrywood are the best-known, most standardized members of that family.

Poker

The Poker is an upright shape in which a near-cylindrical bowl meets a straight shank. The bowl walls are usually kept thick, the base is wide and flat, and the transition where the shank meets the bowl is slightly raised in most examples. Viewed from the side, this profile is most often compared in shape guides to a mallet; the comparison is descriptive rather than exact. Measured against a billiard of the same size, it gives a heavier, more massive impression — part of the bowl's volume goes toward the thick material that spreads the heat.

The shape's practical rationale is clear. At a writing desk, while reading, or with your hands full, the pipe can be set down without needing a separate stand. Because the shank is short, the mouthpiece is easy to grip, and the pipe's center of gravity stays close to its base.

Cherrywood

The Cherrywood is the curved-shank relative of that same flat-bottomed bowl. The short description is the same across every guide: a Poker with its shank and mouthpiece bent. The shank rises from the bowl at an angle or in a gentle curve, and the mouthpiece is usually bent. This keeps the pipe's sitting ability while giving it a balance better suited to being carried clenched in the teeth.

The name is generally taken to come from the material the earliest examples were made of; this explanation is common in guide sources, though it hasn't been traced to a primary document. Records show that the French maker Eugène-Léon Ropp patented a pipe made from wild cherry wood in 1869, and the following year he set up a workshop to produce them at Bussang, in the Vosges mountains. These pipes became the brand's long-running mainstay, and over time the shape itself became detached from the material, turning into a shape name applied to pipes in any material, briar chief among them. Today, the word "cherrywood" in a catalogue mostly describes this silhouette rather than the type of wood.

Distinction and Relatives

The one deciding factor that separates the two shapes is the curve of the shank and mouthpiece: straight counts as a Poker, curved as a Cherrywood. The flat base is common to both and isn't distinctive on its own, since flattening the heel can be applied to other shapes as well. That's why, in shape classification, the sitter pipe is treated not as a family but as a trait.

As the bowl's outline moves away from a cylinder, the naming changes too: conical or barrel-shaped bowls take their own names, and examples with entirely free-form proportions shift into the territory of the freehand. Among classic shape lists, Poker and Cherrywood, thanks to their simple geometry, are two patterns turned to often both in mass production and in hand-shaping.