Smoking Pipes

Smoking pipes ahoy! We have pure pipes and other portable smoke tools made of stainless steel, brass, glass, wood, ceramics, soapstone and other well-smokable materials. No matter what material they are made from or what their design is, the smoking technique is always the same. You put the tobacco or herbal blend into a more or less big bowl at the front end of the pipe, you ignite that mix and inhale at the mouthpiece. If you want to smoke your tobacco blend in a larger pipe smoking, you should crumble and crush your material well, otherwise your smoking experience might vary.

A purepipe however should best be used with pure, non-mixed herbs. To some extent you can also use a pipe as a vaporizer - there are special devices and bowls with lid and narrow opening, which should be a smoked using a strong gas lighter in order to reach the right temperature.
Good activated carbon filters for your pipe are always worth the while - even though there are rumors that they also filter desirable substances from the material. Carbon filters in pipes mainly remove contaminants such as tar and by-products of burnt herbs. And it's much easier to clean your pipe if you smoke it with screens and filters.

The pipe - a truly traditional smoking device

Pure pipes are THE original smoking tool. Early Native American cultures - whether in the North or the South Continent - used pipes for smoking tobacco, millennia before Europeans even came up with the idea of wrapping tobacco or other herbs in paper. Pipes made from corn or clay were found in the oldest known Mesoamerican settlements and show that this form of smoking culture may have an incredibly long history.

Later - when tobacco became increasingly common in Europe during and after the Colombian exchange - pipes even became a status symbol. Noble meerschaum pipes or smoking devices made of the very robust briar wood became more and more popular. And the tobacco pipe even found its way into modern art. French painter René Magritte famously claimed: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" - You can not smoke the image of a pipe!

Anyway, the regular tobacco pipe used to be the standard smoking device, but is almost forgotten nowadays.

Raw Materials for Smoking pipes

Classic tobacco pipes are made from a range of different materials. The most common probably are:

• clay pipes
• Meerschaum pipes
• corn cob pipes
• Bruyère
• soapstone pipes

Apart from that there are some pipes made from unusual and rather rare materials. Most inexpensive pipes simply are from wood, glass, or metal, such as one-hitters, bats, chillums, dugouts, and so on.