Burns the Nose

28th October, 2005: Posted by glpease in Pipes

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In the years I’ve been accumulating pipes seriously, my “collection” has undergone many metamorphoses. Even now, it’s more of a collection of collections, than one cohesive entity. I’m not sure it’s every going to have a specific concentration, or even begin to converge upon one, but only time will tell.

In the early days, I was, and still am, fascinated by the bent bulldog and its variants. I set out to acquire a significant collection of the shape, representing as many makers, important and less so, as possible, in as many sizes and variations as I find. The early part of this phase of my collecting was fairly easy. The shape has always been popular among pipe smokers, and makers have responded by making them in respectable numbers. But, the collection began to plateau at a certain point. There were still important pieces to add, but as I already had the easy ones to get, and was finding myself drifting into the thin air of the esoteric, increasing the collection became something that was either going to require a great deal of time, or a great deal of cash - money can almost always be exchanged for time. Finding myself with a shortage of both commodities, I decided to try a different tack. Read more…»