The History of Smoking Pipes

Smoking pipes have been enjoyed by civilization for many centuries. In ancient times, leaves and other organic material was burned primarily with hallucinogenic results. The technique was discovered by the Greeks and Romans and shared among their culture, again primarily with organic substances such as cannabis or hash.

Tobacco was used for smoking in pipes by the Native Americans for generations.The calumet or "peace pipe" was used for celebration, bartering and during the signing of treaties. However, tobacco  wasn't "discovered" by the Europeans until the 1500s. At that point, it became very popular and tobacco smoking subsequently spread rapidly throughout the rest of the world.

As pipe smoking permeated throughout different regions of the world, each culture developed their own method of smoking tobacco and their own pipe designs. The "hookah", which filters tobacco (or cannabis) with water, was traditionally used in parts of the Middle East. In East Asia, tobacco was mixed with opium and was smoked in pipes during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Pipes were and are made of a variety of materials. Everything from the traditional wood to stone, corncob, clay, ceramic, glass and even metal pipes have been used throughout the ages. There are also a myriad of pipe designs both modern and traditional that are commonly used today.

Tobacco pipes have become icons of 20th century pop culture through characters in art, cinema, books and television. Mark Twain, Cary Grant, Hugh Hefner and hundreds of other celebrities are known to have been regular pipe smokers. Pipe smoking has more recently symbolized a character of solitude or old age and is often considered scholarly or antiquated.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

Indigenous people of the Americas believed that exhaling smoke brought your thoughts to heaven!

So what goes into a pipe?