BOILERPLATE: It’s Hiatus Week, with all the fun that entails. Yes, I’m emptying out the stuff I’ve been meaning to post - sometimes for years - and occasionally favoring you with a link to some part of the site that A) I’ve updated, and B) probably six people care about. But: it’s something!

What have we today?

The middle of the Hiatal Week brings us to a long-dead site that was put up for BleatPlus subscribers, back in the previous decade. This was something I found in the back back room of Hunt and Gather. It even smelled like old pipe tobacco, and almost flaked in my hands like an old leaf.

 

Sherlock Holmes enjoys a quiet moment in Dali County.

 

The "lines converting on the horizon" surrealist cliche was used in ads that wanted to be modern and forward-looking, but there's only so much surrealism you can stuff in a pipe catalog. I don't know if this pamphlet was originally brown, or was has been turned tobacco-colored by the passage of time. I do know that the "Avenue of the Americas" wasn't the official name of 6th avenue until after the war, which means it must have been in use before.

And it was! The "Avenue of the Americas Association" was founded in 1921 to lobby for the demolition of the El. But that has nothing to do with pipes, so nevermind. Let's take a look at what the smart pipe-smoker stuck in his face during the happy days after the war.


So . . . the Denicotea traps nicotines and tars, that are injurious and irritating . . . and everything else in the catalog cheerfully pases this stuff along? Got it.

 

Interesting: I've never seen any of these cigarette cases in antique stores. Ever. I'm guessing they may have broken at a rate of 99.9%, and none remain. Even if you put them in a drawer they manage to break on their own.

With cruising in mind, the new ship - soon to be named Caronia by Princess Elizabeth - received many different features from her Cunard White Star fleetmates. An outdoor swimming pool was a new thing, as was having bathroom / shower facilities in every cabin.

The Vuedex looks like it'll snap your cigarettes in half.

 

The Zeus has a great slogan - Smoke all you like, like all you smoke - and there's not a tobacco enthusiast who wouldn't be pleased to call himself the owner of a Zeus Ejector Model. Ejects Zeuses with a single twist!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Streamliner" is the most bulbous, ungainly pipe I've ever seen, but it's still damned cool; looks like it would double as a microphone. Maybe it did. Who'd want a one-buck Pot when you could have a streamlined pipe? You might find yourself smoking into the wind, and you'd need all the lessons of modern plane-design to keep the pipe from being ripped from your grasp.

 

 

When I smoked a pipe I never had a "smoking mood," but apparently there are some nights when you just want to put a Lord Gay in your mouth instead of a Boatswain, I guess.

 

 

"Huge bowls of masculine enjoyment," eh?

 

 

Well, Mr. Big has nothing on the Commando, which can be jammed into someone's neck on a night-time mission that seeks to sabotage the U-boat yards against all odds. A desperate story of courage and action!

"Dogwood Prince" sounds like some 40s novel about the South.

As modern as tomorrow! And possibly as ugly. Old-style wood grated on to a metal tube in total accordance with the principles of air-conditioning, inasmuch as both involved air moving around, doing something.

It's tomorrow's pipe! Clench this between your teeth as you read of the deteriorating relationship with Soviet Russia and the perils posed by the atom bomb.

 

That’ll do - see you tomorrow. Remember, the Bleat Index has the links. You could eat them all up today.

Why would you do that.

 

 
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