Articles by Chuck Stanion | Smokingpipes Daily Reader

Anyone Can Become Filthy Rich Just By Smoking Some Pipes

April 1, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

13 Comments

On paper, I'm a wealthy man, and I owe my riches to one thing: pipe collecting.

When I started smoking pipes, I didn't realize how lucrative it could be. In fact, I was at first concerned about the expense: Nice pipes ... Read More

The Why and How of Estate Pipe Purchases

March 22, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

31 Comments

When I first learned about estate pipes, back when I didn't know a Billiard from a bathysphere, I was horrified. Used pipes? Pipes that had spent years in the mouths of who knows who smoking who knows what while fraternizing with who knows who from who knows where? Why would these pipes have any value? Sanitizing a used pipe, I deduced, must require an hour in boiling water. ... Read More

Pipe Smoking Field Marshal Gebhard von Blucher

February 28, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

4 Comments

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, a highly decorated Prussian Field Marshal best known for leading armies in the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic (1803-1815) wars, also famously smoked pipes in battle. When outmaneuvering Napoleon, however, minutes count, and he engaged a "pipe-master" whose sole job was to maintain Blücher's pipes ... Read More

The History of Pipe Cleaners

February 21, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

6 Comments

If you've ever run out of pipe cleaners, you already appreciate their essential nature. For most of us, every smoke requires at least a couple, and we tend to maintain a good supply, especially when we've experienced the extraordinary anguish of their absence. Whether clearing a blocked ... Read More

The Pipe Community Grieves Vernon Vig

February 19, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

1 Comment

There are a lot of great pipes out there," commented Vernon Vig a few months ago. We had been chatting about his random pipe-smoking episode with Walter Cronkite in the '70s in New York City, but the conversation had drifted to the greater world of pipes, as it often did with Vernon. "A lot of great people are waiting to connect with them and each other. Pipe clubs and shows bring ... Read More

Adventurer and Pipe Smoker John Fairfax

February 7, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

7 Comments

John Fairfax was the first to traverse an ocean alone by rowboat. It was the Atlantic, and two years later, in 1971, he and his partner, Sylvia Cook, were the first to row across the Pacific. The pipe-smoking adventurer had learned his navigation skills as a pirate and as captain of a vessel smuggling whisky, guns, and cigarettes across the globe. He was familiar with the sea and its creatures. When he was attacked ... Read More

The Legend of Hugh Glass: Pipe-Smoking Frontiersman

January 24, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

10 Comments

Geniuses like Einstein, Hubble, Jung, Tolkien, Sartre, and others have contributed to a stereotype of pipe smokers as intellectual and contemplative personalities, puffing gently, developing theories, and achieving art that changes the world. Yet pipe ... Read More

The Supreme Balance of Small Batch: Firebird Flake

January 3, 2025 by Chuck Stanion

34 Comments

Appropriate for the advent of a new calendar year, Firebird Flake is ready for its introduction to the world. The Firebird of legend symbolizes beauty, rebirth, and renewal. It is a magical being with luminescent or fiery wings whose capture may be rewarded with wishes or good fortune. ... Read More

John Milton: Pipe Smoker

December 27, 2024 by Chuck Stanion

8 Comments

If you've used the word "pandemonium," perhaps when your life has been upended by craziness or absurdity, you have John Milton to thank — not for the craziness, but for the word to describe it, which he invented. It's from his epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667), and was "the high capital of Satan and all his peers," and the dwelling place of all demons. Its meaning has shifted in modern times, but Milton conceived it. ... Read More

The Christmas Chimney Fire

December 20, 2024 by Chuck Stanion

26 Comments

One Christmas Eve in the '60s, very late in the evening, as my brothers, sister, and I tried to sleep through the anticipation of Santa's arrival, my dad's fire monitor went off. It was a loud, screeching thing that we all hated because it squawked and chirped through loud static every night and rarely announced anything exciting. Dad was a volunteer firefighter for our small village ... Read More

Chuck Stanion