Pipes Gifted to American Presidents

Pipes gifted to American presidents are the product of a custom the tobacco industry maintained for roughly a century, serving both a courteous and a promotional function. While most protocol gifts sent to the White House were presented to the office, a pipe was a gift directed straight at the person; it responded to a habit the recipient was known, or assumed, to have. For this reason the record of gift pipes also serves as an indirect document of presidents' tobacco habits. The custom was born at the end of the 19th century and quietly came to an end in the last quarter of the 20th.

Demuth's Presidential Series

German-born William Demuth (1835-1911) founded the company bearing his name in New York in 1862 and quickly became the country's largest pipe manufacturer. In 1881, when his friend James A. Garfield took office, he presented two meerschaum pipes carved with portraits of the president and his wife. The warm reception the gift received launched a long-running practice at the firm: a pipe personalized for every president after Garfield. This custom, sustained even after Demuth's death in 1911, ended with the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The company also had figural meerschaum portraits carved of presidents from John Adams through Hoover; a bust of George Washington accompanied the series. Another meerschaum piece Demuth commissioned, a roughly eighty-centimetre composition depicting Columbus's landing that took two years to complete, was unveiled at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For the crossing paths of the firm's Fifth Avenue store with London, see Demuth and Dunhill.

Harding's Two Sets

Warren G. Harding, who served from March 1921 to August 1923, is remembered in the tobacco trade press of the era as a pipe-smoking president and received at least two gifts. A 1922 trade magazine report states that Alfred Dunhill had sent the president a set of four pipes in 1921: two with plain straight grain, two with sandblasted shell finish. The leather case was stamped in gold leaf with the president's name and the year 1921. For the brand's own history, see the Dunhill entry.

The second set arrived in June 1923. Arthur H. Diamant, an officer of the Mecca Temple lodge in New York, presented the president with a set of seven WDC Milano briar pipes, along with a velvet-lined leather case and a gold plate engraved with the date.

Gifts weren't going only to presidents in these years. In 1921 William Demuth & Co. prepared a special set for Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who had commanded the Allied forces in the First World War; the marshal's thank-you letter, sent from Paris, was published in the trade press, and the pipes were exhibited in New York.

From Coolidge to Ford

Calvin Coolidge, who succeeded to the presidency upon Harding's death in office, smoked cigars; even so, he was the most heavily targeted recipient of tobacco gifts sent to the White House. A 1925 trade magazine report records the variety of gifts arriving: alongside cigars and cigarettes, hand-carved and machine-made briar pipes, amber or meerschaum mouthpieces with gold and silver bands, tobacco pouches, lighters, humidor boxes, and pipe stands. These came not only from companies but from admirers at home and abroad.

Gerald Ford is considered the last U.S. president to smoke a pipe regularly in public. His collection is said to have numbered around thirty-five pipes, with a preference for small, easily carried models. Whether Ford ever received a gift pipe is debated: the public gift list at his presidential library includes no pipes, and it's claimed he bought his own pipes; on the other hand, there are accounts of pipes given to him as gifts during foreign visits.

The Last Known Example: 1984

The last known gift was given in June 1984, during Ronald Reagan's visit to Ireland. Henry Arundel, an executive of Kapp & Peterson, presented the president with a Mark Twain pipe in a specially made wooden box. This series, developed from a photograph of the writer holding a system pipe with a silver band from 1896, had gone into production in 1980, with 400 numbered pieces made the first year, 1,000 the next, and unnumbered production from 1983 onward. Reagan's thank-you letter, dated July 1984, is preserved in Peterson's records. For the brand's history, see the Peterson entry. No comparable presidential gift after this date appears in the known record; the tradition has become a chapter that remains only in the archives.