Folks across the Internet have been trumpeting for a few weeks now their "victory" over paid content when the venerable New York Times opened up their vaults to the Internet hordes looking for free information. So this may not be news to those believe data wants to be free but for pipe smokers, this can provide some great insight into a time when smoking was much more acceptable.
Doing some research on meerschaum at the turn of the last century I stumbled upon some articles and letter that caught my eye.
Let's get started with the article "How to Color a Meerschaum Pipe" from The Edinburgh Scotsman originally from November 24, 1895 gives some details about a skill that seems much in debate these days, as it was then.
I found a great article entitled "Color Meerschaum Pipes By Machinery". The sub heads (3 of them no less) drew me closer into the story...
"Smoke a Dozen at Once, and Do It Better Than a Tobacco Lover Could.
CIGAR MAN OUT OF A JOB
Used to get $5 or More for Doing it - Tells How to Color it Without Burning or Spotting."
The very literate cigar retailer is quoted as stating with a sigh that:
"There used to be a time...when I made a substantial addition to my income coloring meerschaum pipes for people that were too lazy or ignorant of how to do it themselves, but in the case of many other industries manual labor, if you can call smoking manual labor, has had to give before the march of machinery."
He goes on to decry machines that can smoke up to half a dozen pipes at a time for as little as $2 each and better than he could! At this point in time, you could buy meerschaum pipes as low as 75 cents each (albeit cheap ones).
He does offer some great tips on coloring your meerschaum though:
- Don't smoke too fast. Too much heat will cause a loss of the wax that makes the coloring magic happen. Smoke, instead, with long, slow puffs.
- Let the pipe cool adequately between bowls.
- Wrap a "false bowl" in cotton and place it inside the bowl and smoke from this. The separation allows the smoke to reach the cool bowl. This is not unlike the concept of coloring bowls that survives to this day.
- Don't wrap a warm pipe with chamois or other absorbent cloth as it will draw the beeswax away from the bowl
One other item of interest that came about this is relevant to my posting of the other day about the origination of the name Meerschaum. The tobacconist in this article contends that the name more likely came as a variation of the Tartaric (a language spoken by the Tartars) word myrsen, meaning clay.
The debate over how to color a meerschaum pipe seems to have raged on and of over the years.
As the great debate wages in the letters to the editor column of the Times, this fun little piece came in. The author of "Coloring Meerschaum Pipes" sounds like someone who intends to take his secret to the grave with him.
I wonder if the Dr. Pease he refers to is any relation to the G.L. Pease of pipe tobacco fame? Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original letter of which he speaks.
This particular letter to the editor, "Process of Coloring It Beset with Many Difficulties", signed by SMOKER sounds more like the kind of smoker that would have been addicted to cigarettes in a different era. Lines like this are a dead give away to why he smokes: "We smokers are possessed by a vain and foolish habit, in which the sight of the ascending smoke contributes perhaps more pleasure than the flavour of the weed." This doesn't sound like a true Brother of the Leaf...
Some background for those who are interested comes from W.N.H. in "A ROYAL MEERSCHAUM; Colored in Fifteen Days "by Order of the Czar."" Guess those Czars weren't all that bad (he says tongue firmly planted in cheek).
On another note, people who take exception with journalism today would be amazed at how far we've come since "HOW HE SOLD HIS PIPES". Tidbits like this really make you wonder about journalism in the 19th century. You would think they'd have better things to report than this little blurb. One thing that this does bring to mind though is how little things have changed. People are still willing to take advantage of someone who they think is at the disadvantage when, in fact, the opposite is often true.
Hopefully I'll find more gems in the future to share... From the Archives of The New York Times...