Articles by Chuck Stanion | Smokingpipes Daily Reader

Mark Irwin: Doctor of Pipes and Peterson Researcher Extraordinaire

April 15, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

9 Comments

Our pipe-smoking hobby is filled with impressive individuals. We have tobacco blenders and people involved in the tobacco side of the industry. We have independent artisan pipe makers and other artisan makers who contribute to the production of larger workshops; we have accessories makers who make everything from custom artisanal tampers to pipe furniture to leather ... Read More

The Influential Drucquer & Sons, Ltd

April 7, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

10 Comments

Drucquer & Sons was a place where pipe enthusiasts worked or gathered, enthusiasts who loved tobacco, like pipe enthusiasts everywhere. The famous tobacconist shop, however, has taken on a mythology of its own and is spoken of with respect and admiration. ... Read More

Introducing: The Charles Peterson Collection

March 23, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

3 Comments

Peterson of Dublin is doing some particularly innovative work, improving and refining their sandblasting, their finishing processes and design. A large part of their ability to do that is thanks to the founder of the company, Charles Peterson, who designed the world-famous Peterson System Pipe and whose legacy of innovation ... Read More

Jody Davis: The Rock Star Pipe Maker

March 18, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

8 Comments

Jody Davis is the lead guitarist for The Newsboys, a Christian rock band of enormous popularity. "It's probably the biggest band you've never heard of," he jokes. Jody is a well-grounded individual who has not let his musical fame alter his boyish charm and self-deprecating sense of humor. He says that talent had less to do with his success than chance and good fortune. ... Read More

James Thurber: Celebrated Humorist and Sometimes Pipe Smoker

March 11, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

4 Comments

Widely considered the foremost humorist of the 20th century, James Thurber (1894-1961) often portrayed bemused protagonists clumsily navigating the complexity of modern life through incomprehension, fantasy, and defeated acceptance. Thurber's writings and drawings encapsulate those odd but universal feelings of being out of phase with the rest of humanity, and his ... Read More

Rich Esserman: Big Pipe Guy

February 25, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

22 Comments

The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris was a journal of vast pipe experiences submitted for publication by collectors and pipe enthusiasts around the globe. Tom Dunn founded The Universal Coterie of Pipe Smokers in 1964 as a means of exchanging information about pipes across the entire world. Most of his issues in the first decades were hand-cranked on a mimeograph machine, and Tom typed the contents on his manual typewriter. ... Read More

Herbert Hoover: Pipe Smoker... and Perhaps Worst President in History

February 18, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

16 Comments

The 31st president of the United States, Herbert Hoover is popularly remembered as one of the worst presidents in history. That reputation, however, is somewhat undeserved and partially the result of political propaganda advanced by the opposing party and Franklin Roosevelt, who ran against him in 1932 and despite his New Deal being no more effective in resolving the economic downturn than his predecessor. That's not to say it's entirely undeserved. Hoover made mistakes. ... Read More

Carl Gustav Jung: Pipe-Smoking Founder of Analytical Psychology

February 11, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

22 Comments

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were great friends for about five years, from 1907 to 1912. Both were brilliant, and their psychoanalytic work and theories coincided. They fished together, they lectured together, they explored the Arctic on an expedition together, they spent three months touring the U.S. together. Freud ... Read More

Herman Melville's Literary Pipes

February 4, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

25 Comments

Moby-Dick; (1851), the most famous tale of whaling and the high seas ever written, was a commercial disaster. Its author, Herman Melville, made about $1,200 from the 3,200 total copies sold in his lifetime. It was a critical and popular failure, and readers didn't know what to make of its complex themes and erratic point of view. Like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Emily ... Read More

Folklore: An Unsurpassed Virginia Blend Pressed into 16oz Bricks

January 28, 2022 by Chuck Stanion

30 Comments

The word folklore conjures images of griffins and faeries, mermaids, basilisks, and other mysterious denizens of our imaginations. Folklore is a concept that reaches into our misty, enchanted past and sharpens the shadowy confines of our subconscious. It rekindles stories passed through generations, stories that instruct and remind, advise and inspire. ... Read More

Chuck Stanion