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Tolkien leaves pipesters clueless

Smokers and carvers alike have been inspired by Tolkien's genre founding trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. It has pointed many an adolescent in the direction of briar, rather than Lucky Strikes, and - especially among the young - there has long been considerable demand for a Tolkienesque pipe. According to some, German manufacturer Vauen has now come up with the definitive style. It's a fanciful notion, but not particularly well founded.

By consulting Google, pipesters looking for a piece with a Tolkien label attached to it are faced with a wide range of choices. Carvers like Todd Johnson and Jan Zeman have produced some fine, orginal work - without stooping to the kitsch-prone depths of 'authenticity'. Their pipes are tributes to the epic, rather than rip-offish attempts to make it come real. And if you regard the books - not Hollywood - as the measure of Things Pertaining To Rings, that is as far as one can get. Neither Tolkien nor circumstantial evidence provide concrete guidelines for anything more definitive.

Nonetheless, the Lord of the Rings Fan Club is branding only one option 'official' - the pipes produced by Vauen and styled like those puffed in the film itself (see here). Indeed, these would be spot-on for a fancy-dress convention of movie freaks - so if that's where you're heading, read no further. Don't forget to leave watches, glasses, cell phones and other 21st century paraphernalia at home.

Non-historical parallels

As far as the books (rather than the movie) are concerned, Vauen's claim to authenticity is much weaker. Since the professor himself provides very few clues for would-be pipe designers, the re-enaction crowd turns to real history for hints. It seems a logical step to take - so uncannily does the epic trick its readers into perceiving Middle Earth as their very own planet. But sadly, the logic is flawed, even when a degree of truth-bending is accepted. The pipes' shapes are based on casual association, rather than informed guesses - and it is garbled association at that.

For taken by the rational light of day, there's surprisingly little reason to base designs on any existing historical models - and certainly not on the long shapes of the clay-pipe heyday, as Vauen and the movie-makers obviously consider imperative. Not only does Tolkien appeal to a romantic, medievalist streak in his admirers, whereas pipe-smoking in Europe was a much later development anyway. More specifically, the lengthy Churchwarden was a contemporary of the steam-engine, rather than the jousting arena. Really early clays were typically only four to six inches in length and cursed with tiny bowls (due to the exorbitant price of tobacco). Of course, even these weren't around when knights wore shining armour, but at least their design might be viewed as truly pre-industrial.

Nitpicking? Perhaps. And admittedly, there's something to be said for Vauen's long stems in the light of Tolkien's text. Unfortunately, however, there are just as many objections against them - and the evidence is scant both ways. Of the two long pipes mentioned in the Middle Earth saga, the first can safely be neglected by serious students of design. The pipe Bilbo is smoking when Gandalf initially visits him in The Hobbit is obviously a gimmick conceived to intrigue that book's juvenile target readership, and can hardly be considered representative of the Shire's carving trade. Reaching down to the halfling's hairy toes it defies pipe-cleaners and their predecessors, goose-quills, making it a cumbersome everyday choice. And besides, it is described as "an enormous long wooden pipe", not "his pipe" or even merely "his favourite" - just one very extravagant item in his rotation, so to speak. Bilbo certainly also possesses shorter pieces, finding one in his pocket just before stumbling upon Gollum.

The second time we encounter a pipe described as "long-stemmed" is in the trilogy proper, in Bree, where Strider is smoking such a piece when Frodo first sets eyes on him. However, the very fact that its length and curious carving require specific mention indicates that the future King's choice of pipe cannot be regarded as common or universal. The only quality recommending it to imitators is that few other pipes are described at all. Accordingly, the Aragorn model enjoys the greatest claim to accuracy in the Vauen range, but cannot be taken as a prototype for any others.

Short and sweet

Perhaps Tolkien's real vision was of a pipe world as diverse as today's. The hobbits themselves, it seems, may have preferred short and practical smoking gadgets. When Gimli bemoans the loss of his pipe after Saruman's downfall in Isengard, Pippin reaches for a wallet under his jacket to produce his own wooden pipe and a reserve piece he has brought along in case replacement is needed. This is described as small, with a wide flattened bowl. But Pippin's favourite can hardly be much longer, given the place where he keeps it and the brute violence he has endured in the preceding chapters. One may safely assume that none of the pipes in the Vauen range would have survived such rough life.

There is one further mention of pipes in a more than fleeting way. In Rivendell, Bilbo gives Merry and Pippin a pipe each as a parting gift. The description of these is easily the longest in the entire epic and consists of just over a line: "… two beautiful pipes with pearl mouth-pieces and bound with fine-wrought silver." Made by elves, one would like to think that their quality surpasses anything a factory in southern Germany might produce.

In fact, my personal fancy is that they resemble a jazzed-up version of a Becker & Musico spigot. But that's just me - I'll not call it "official".

(December 4, 2003)

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