The Doctor of Pipes and Master of Pipes Awards

Doctor of Pipes and Master of Pipes are two honors that the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club (CPCC) presents each year at its pipe show. Since no other regular program is known to formally recognize individual contribution in the community, both are treated as de facto lifetime achievement honors. Collector and writer Ben Rapaport, in an essay published on Pipedia in 2022, pointed to the structure's weak point: both titles depend on the survival of a single club.

The Criteria for the Two Titles

Doctor of Pipes was established in 1998. The first two honors went to Frank Burla, the name behind the CPCC and the Chicago show, and to Tom Dunn, known for the years he spent publishing The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris bulletin. Only two names are chosen each year: one from those working in the industry, one from among collectors. A nominee is expected to have given at least twenty years of service to the community. Nomination and voting are open only to living holders of the Doctor title; in this respect the program functions as a closed peer review.

Master of Pipes was added in 2017 to include a younger generation, with the same two-per-year selection method applying here as well. The criteria are an age cap of forty-five and at least ten years of contribution. The first two honors went to David Shain and Sykes Wilford. According to the club's records, Wilford — Master in 2017 and Doctor in 2020 — is the only name to hold both titles.

The Club and the Show

The CPCC's origins trace back to separate pipe groups meeting on Chicago's north and south sides coming together in the late 1980s; the club was registered as a nonprofit association in 1995, with Michael Reschke as its first president. The Chicagoland International Pipe & Tobacciana Show, which the club has run since 1996, is regarded as the field's largest annual gathering by international attendance and has changed venues several times over the years. The death of Frank Burla, the show's founding director, in October 2021, was a reminder of how much such structures can depend on individual people. Similar cases appear often in the history of pipe clubs.

European Precedents

In Europe, comparable structures reach much further back. London's guild of pipe makers, chartered by James I in 1619 and re-chartered by Charles I in 1634, represents the tradition of a trade guild rather than an award program, and today it is known chiefly for its charitable work.

The best-known example in award form comes from Britain. First presented in 1964 and later run by the British Pipesmokers' Council, the "Pipe Smoker of the Year" went in its first year to actor Rupert Davies; Harold Wilson was chosen in 1965 and additionally received the "Pipeman of the Decade" title in 1976. The program's end came with regulations banning the advertising and promotion of tobacco products: the final award went to Stephen Fry in 2003, and the program closed the following year. The title was revived once in 2014 by a federation of British pipe clubs. In Germany, Tabakforum's "Pfeifenraucher des Jahres" selection, begun in 1969, continues today; nominees are mostly drawn from public figures. In France, the Confrérie des maîtres-pipiers, founded in 1966 to serve as an ambassador for the Saint-Claude pipe industry, meets twice a year and at one of these gatherings selects "France's foremost pipe smoker"; the association's founding traces to an initiative by the politician Edgar Faure, who bore the same title. That most of these awards go to well-known names has closely intertwined these programs with lists of famous pipe smokers.

The Heart of the Debate

The European examples show that programs of this kind can end abruptly with a change in regulation. Rapaport's question arises from exactly this: if the club were ever to dissolve, what would become of the two titles? The path proposed in the essay is to establish a simple, shared structure not dependent on the existence of a single club, run through volunteer effort, and designed in consultation with today's title holders.