Pipe Books and Publications

Pipe books and publications make up this pursuit's own written memory. The literature falls roughly into four clusters: monographs on the history of pipes and tobacco, studies documenting a single brand's past, collector-oriented reference and dating guides, and, finally, literary essays and anthologies. The overwhelming majority of these publications are in English; original Turkish-language sources are practically nonexistent, so a reader interested in the subject is usually forced to read in a foreign language.

Early Classics

The oldest examples of this literature came out of literature itself. Scottish writer J. M. Barrie's 1890 book My Lady Nicotine is a collection of short, humorous essays about the struggle to quit tobacco; the fictional "Arcadia" blend mentioned in the book went on to become a small legend of its own among later generations.

The book that first made the pipe's history a systematic subject of study is Alfred Dunhill's The Pipe Book, published in 1924. Bringing the pipe traditions of different cultures together in a single volume, the work has been reprinted many times since, and its author was elected to the Royal Society of Arts in 1925. Roughly thirty years later, in 1954, Dunhill also published The Gentle Art of Smoking. That same year saw the release of Georges Herment's The Pipe, translated from the French original — one of the early handbooks on choosing, smoking, and caring for a pipe.

Reference Works and Bibliographies

One of the most comprehensive attempts to gather brand and workshop records into a single volume is José Manuel Lopes's work, written in Portuguese under the title Cachimbos and translated into English in 2005 as Pipes, Artisans and Trademarks. Richard Carleton Hacker's The Ultimate Pipe Book, first printed in 1984, and his collecting-focused Rare Smoke, have also long been considered standard references.

The name behind the field's bibliography is Ben Rapaport. A Complete Guide to Collecting Antique Pipes (1979) and Collecting Antique Meerschaum Pipes (1999), both from Schiffer, are counted among the foundational texts of antique pipe collecting. Rapaport's self-published 1989 work The Global Guide to Tobacco Literature is a subject-by-subject catalogue of tobacco and pipe books published in multiple languages. The latest edition of this bibliography, which the author expanded and updated over the years, is now distributed as a PDF through Pipedia.

Brand Monographs and Contemporary Narratives

Over the past twenty years, detailed monographs devoted to a single brand have come to the fore. Mark Irwin and Gary Malmberg's joint book The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson builds Peterson's journey from 1865 to today on period catalogues and the stories of people who worked at the firm. John C. Loring's The Dunhill Briar Pipe is considered the first standalone book devoted solely to Dunhill pipes; while telling the brand's history, it also functions as a dating guide built on reading the stamps. Neil Archer Roan's Comoy's Blue Riband covers Comoy's of London's series of the same name through shape, name, and dating lists; it was printed in a limited run. Gary B. Schrier's The History of the Calabash Pipe traces the calabash pipe tradition back to its source, covering a broad range from the cultivation of the gourd to distinguishing between brands.

Jan Andersson's work leads the field of books on artisan pipes: a monograph on Bo Nordh, reportedly published in Sweden in 2008, and Scandinavian Pipemakers, which surveys modern Scandinavian pipe making workshop by workshop. Rick Newcombe's In Search of Pipe Dreams (2006) and its sequel Still Searching for Pipe Dreams recount contemporary collecting and the friendships built with makers in the first person, representing the literature's more personal vein.