Harem Pipe: An American Tabletop Smoking Apparatus

Harem Pipe is a tabletop smoking apparatus patented in the mid-1930s and brought to market in the United States in the mid-20th century. It is not a pipe in the classical sense. It is built from three parts: a holder into which a cigarette or cigar is set at an angle, a metal ashtray base to which the holder is attached, and a flexible, braid-covered hose running from the base with a plastic mouthpiece at its end. The smoker watches the tobacco burn from a distance and draws smoke only through the end of the hose. The stamp on the underside of the base reads, alongside the product name, the slogan "The Smokers Robot," the patent number, the trio "COMFORT — LUXURY — SAFETY," and the phrase "Jonathan Law, New Haven, Conn."

The Patent Behind the Design

The number on the stamp refers to US Patent No. 2,093,760, titled "Cigarette and Cigar Holder." According to the document, the application was filed on 20 June 1935 in the name of James P. Kiernan, resident of Derby, Connecticut, and the patent was registered on 21 September 1937. The purpose section of the text comes down to three points: keeping the smoker away from the burning tobacco, preventing smoke from reaching the face and eyes, and eliminating the fire risk of smoking in bed by placing the apparatus on a side table or nightstand.

Mechanical details are also described in the document. The holder tilts toward the base's vertical axis, so that once accumulated ash reaches sufficient weight it breaks off on its own and falls into the base. When the holder's outer tube is pressed back to compress the spring inside it, the stationary inner tube holds the cigarette butt in place; the outer tube slides off over the butt, which then likewise falls into the base. The interior of the hose is lined with rubber, its exterior covered with silk or a similar weave. The patent further notes that the holder can be replaced with a bowl for smoking pipe tobacco, and that several holders can be attached to a single base so that several people around a bridge table can share the same apparatus.

Name, Form, and Association

The name "Harem" has no connection to the design's origin; it is an example of the orientalist marketing language commonly seen in American consumer goods of the period. The arrangement of a separate body connected to a braided hose visually recalls the hookah, yet the Harem Pipe has neither water nor a cooling chamber; the hose merely creates distance. The idea of keeping away from burning tobacco is not new in itself: in the Ottoman chibouk culture, the long-stemmed chibouk achieved the same distance for centuries by another means. What sets the Harem Pipe apart is that it achieves this distance through a bendable hose, and that its bowl stays fixed on the table rather than being carried in hand. The mouthpiece being plastic also reflects the mass-production trend of the era; in these years cheap synthetics were increasingly replacing classic mouthpiece materials.

A Later Version and Collecting

There is no definitive document regarding the years of production; collector records estimate the apparatus was on the market sometime between the 1940s and the 1950s. According to the same records, later versions dropped the name "Harem" and the product was stamped only with the name Jonathan Law; no independent trade record has been found for a firm of that name in New Haven. The Harem Pipe today is remembered less as part of the mainstream of pipe history than among the equipment and apparatus experiments that appear throughout the world history of the pipe; in tobacciana collecting it is likewise grouped under the heading of these curious devices.