Search results

Thanks for the welcome! Marechal Ruchon & Cie. sold the brand to Oppenheimer in 1902 or so, who changed it to Marechal, Ruchon & Co, Ltd, and used the mark freely. There are rumours that the MR&C brand ceased to exist once Cadogan was formed in 1920, but that's not exactly the case. Whether or...

A couple things. Your pipe has a London hallmark, and that lower case, italicized serif 'b' would indicate 1957, which is consistent with everything else. The New Standard came fairly late to the party. I don't know exactly when, but it was certainly around by '57. Perspex was invented, if I...

Most? In the current catalogue, 16 have perique, 20 have none...

Dunno, Richard. I think those June Bugs would be the perfect pipe for smoking in the Brütsch Mopetta pictured in your avatar. At a top speed of 22mph, you wouldn't have to worry too much about burnouts, and at 111mpg, the fuel savings alone would pay for the pipes in no time. Clearly, though...

It is. I layered the brights as a core between two layers of darker leaf. I actually did this for reasons other than aesthetics. I wanted the bright VAs to retain some of their zesty character as the blocks fermented, rather than having that subsumed by the influence of the darker VAs and the...

Fun stuff! I'll have to give the new version a go. Thanks.

I'm a long-time lover of old pinball machines, preferring the purely mechanical ones to the hybrid machines that came during the transition of the entertainment machine industry from mechanical machines to video games. I even worked for a summer for a guy who did on-site pinball maintenance and...

Is it still layered as the original was, with the top of the cakes being dark, and the bottom being light? That was always something I liked about the original, as you could "play" with the blend a bit, and made for a very attractive presentation. In fact, that was what inspired me to explore...

Nice to see Ashbury get some props! I admit, I haven't paid it much attention for a while, either, until I stumbled upon a ten year old tin a couple weeks ago, and decided to see what wonders time had wrought. Before I knew it, the tin was empty. A decade did really nice things for it. The...

Not to mention that his method would likely include some exotic precision machinery only available from a little-known Swiss manufacturer that would require a second mortgage, a six-week lead time for delivery, and an army of highly trained engineers to install it in your basement. ;)

Here's a little article that talks a bit about various ways of preparing JKP.

I just chatted with Marty about this, and he doesn't remember the year either, but thinks it could have been 5-7 years ago. Time has a way of getting away from us sometimes, especially as more of it passes... So, after a "duh" moment, I poked through my archives. According to an old email from...

I don't have the date, but recall that these changes occurred coincidently with R.D. Field discontinuing representation of Radice in the US. Luca Di Piazza now represents the brand internationally, I believe. It's probably been close to ten years now.

As I'm sure you know, the June Bug was the third limited edition pipes made as a Pease/diPiazza Designs project. Only 100 were made, and they sold out fairly quickly. At this point, you're likely only going to find one on the estate market. I do see them pop up on occasion, but not often. I...

No worries. It takes a lot more than this to get my knickers twisted.

True. But, do they burn out? He don't use no bowl coatings, neither. ;) A collector friend of mine bought a Grabow, promising that he'd give it a fair shot. He's had it almost two years, now. I asked when he was going to perform his experiment. He somewhat reluctantly admitted that he was...

The molecules responsible for aroma are not the same as the ones  that darken bowls, so there's no real comparison there. Think of the plastic bags that are used to hold bulk tobacco. You can smell the tobacco through the bags because the membrane is permeable to the aroma compounds, while water...

Experience trumps, right? Empirical data can be anecdotal, but sufficient data points establish a trend. I have one personally verified data point. I had a pipe that smoked well and tasted good, but was cheap enough to sacrifice for an experiment. I applied a thin coat of polyurethane to the...

I just updated my page. Yes, Sixpence is finally shipping! I can breathe, now...and sleep.