Regarding the Coloring of Algerian Briar

[Briar Lee]

Thanks for the synopsis I’ve realized I’m in need of a book on French history; I only know a few highlights. I enjoy those movies where the French foreign legion is in Africa.

When I graduated high school in 1976 all the world history I learned in school, ended with World War Two. After that history was considered too divisive and controversial to teach kids. Seriously.

All of us kids learned about the Holocaust but only if our parents were history addicts, did we learn about the outrageous cruelty of the French in Algeria, the Belgians in the Belgian Congo, and apartheid in South Africa.

The worst massacre the USA perpetrated against the Indians was Wounded Knee in 1890. It began when an Indian fired a rifle and about 30 USA soldiers and about 90 Lakota warriors were killed in a battle, that developed into a massacre, of as many as 250 Indian civilians.

The French torturing and murdering a few hundred civilians in Algeria wouldn’t have made the news during the Algerian War of Independence. The French made postcards of tortured Algerians. They dropped them out of helicopters. They repeatedly raped women. In all they may have murdered a million, at least hundreds of thousands. And then lost the war.

There couldn’t have been much of a briar trade in the middle of that war.

Even before the war, Robert Marx used Algerian briar but he wasn’t proud of it.

Unlike briar from other nations on the rim of the Mediterranean the Algerian product was harvested by exploited and conquered natives.

The reason it was better to smoke was likely because of the severe climate the Berbers lived in and where it grew very slowly on hillsides.

 

[PipeIT]

It's just an emoji guy, no need to get upset! I get weird ones a lot, and just pretend to not understand it.

I wasn’t upset, I was just curious as to what he saw/noticed is all, like, did I miss/overlook something

 

[PipeIT]

View attachment 263176
Here’s why we are not there now.

I’m not sure what I am looking at, and who’s not going there?

 

[Briar Lee]

I’m not sure what I am looking at, and who’s not going there?

The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is not on anybody’s list of modern enlightened nations.

Human rights in Algeria - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

A high level of civilization is something we take for granted and cannot be rushed.

There’s not a pipe ever made worth rising your life buying briar in Algeria to make.

 

[Lumbridge]

Here are two nearly identical El Morjane Algerian briars of mine. They were the same color when I got them. The bottom one is unsmoked, whereas the top one has been smoked quite a bit and is darkening nicely.
I have several more El Morjanes. They are ugly as sin, but I'll be damned if they aren't some of my best smokers. Rich and full flavor from the first smoke.

Weirdly enough, I bought three of these panels, and one of them came without the airway drilled. Maybe some day I'll make an attempt to drill it out.

 

[Lumbridge]

Here are two nearly identical El Morjane Algerian briars of mine. They were the same color when I got them. The bottom one is unsmoked, whereas the top one has been smoked quite a bit and is darkening nicely.

I have to fact-check myself, here. The smoked one was, in fact, darker than the other when they were purchased. I realized this when I referenced an older photo. I have noticed it darkening to some degree over time, though I think this also has something to do with exposure to skin oil.

 

[PipeIT]

The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is not on anybody’s list of modern enlightened nations.

Human rights in Algeria - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

A high level of civilization is something we take for granted and cannot be rushed.

There’s not a pipe ever made worth rising your life buying briar in Algeria to make.

On a side note, and I seriously don’t want this going off the rails here, so there’s no need for anyone to reply.

When we consider Algeria and any Exports it has, and compare that to how much business the world does with China and China’s extreme lack too for human rights, Algeria seriously pales in comparison, especially for trying to compare Briar against the massively huge world of Chinese exportation.

If we’re going to have discussions about Life and Human Rights, let us remind ourselves China is a Communist country, we do business with, that should of never happened.

P.S. My comments are not against the Chinese citizens, but it’s government, and certainly not against our Chinese pipe smoking brethren either.

 

[Briar Lee]

An illustration of rapid coloring.

Marx used Algerian briar, likely all the same grade, which came in bags. Since he only made “carriage trade” pipes he likely bought plateaux blocks.

But not all plateaux blocks of the same grade were the same aesthetic quality. The largest and best were reserved for the monster sized $25 400 freehands and the $15 “Big Boy” pipes that were on the top of the displays or under glass in the counter.

Yesterday I got in a magnificent “Big Boy” squat chubby bent Pot. Not one fill and polished smooth, no cuts, carvings or gouches.

It looked smoked about three times, and I took a Brillo pad and soapy water, followed by Everclear and a paper towel, and it cleaned up to a light tan, brand new condition. Algerian briar was soft. It attracts carbon easily but that carbon won’t stick hard to the polished surface.

Twisted steel wool restores the chamber to brown any time you want to.

I don’t claim it will not ghost, I’m saying none of my Marxman pipes are haunted.



After two smokes. The bottom of the first bowl had a deliciously light taste of briar, the second did not.




i waxed it several times with carnuaba wax as I smoked it, the bowls walls are so thick it barely gets warm.

After three smokes.



After four smokes




In today’s dollars those $15 pipes would be $300 grade pipes.

The coloring those old pre 54 top grade Algerian pipes get is just a whisker below the surface, trapped by the polish and wax. I’ve agreed with another poster here the coloring is from the reddish tannins driven to the surface of the ultra porous old briar.

It is a selling point for meerschaums.

I can’t find where Bob Marx ever mentioned it. It was likely one of the many reasons to cuss Algerian briar.

But it smoked the best.

They’ll ruin you for less.

 

[Briar Lee]

On a side note, and I seriously don’t want this going off the rails here, so there’s no need for anyone to reply.

When we consider Algeria and any Exports it has, and compare that to how much business the world does with China and China’s extreme lack too for human rights, Algeria seriously pales in comparison, especially for trying to compare Briar against the massively huge world of Chinese exportation.

If we’re going to have discussions about Life and Human Rights, let us remind ourselves China is a Communist country, we do business with, that should of never happened.

P.S. My comments are not against the Chinese citizens, but it’s government, and certainly not against our Chinese pipe smoking brethren either.

I completely agree that over a billion Chinese live in serfdom controlled by a handful of other Chinese. In the memory of living people the Chinese government murdered their own people on an industrial scale.

The difference of Colonial Algeria was for 124 years Christian French conquerors raped, tortured, exploited, starved, oppressed and murdered millions of Muslim native Algerians. They might still be doing it except for a successful 8 year revolution. After raping, torturing and murdering another million natives the French gave up and went home, in 1962.

The French more or less escaped any serious censure in high school history classes because unlike the Belgians in the Belgian Congo the French were not in the habit of cutting the arms off native children. The French seemed to have spared native children, which in time was their undoing, when as adults they rose up and threw the French out.

My old Marxman pipes were made at 27 West 24th Street New York City by well paid New Yorkers in the highest wage city on this planet. So were my classic era Kaywoodies, Lees, and Webers.


So long as Bob Marx was at the helm he never mentioned he used Algerian briar, although there’s near universal agreement that is all he used.

After the sale to Mastercraft is when Algerian Briar stamps appear on a Marxman.

Was Bob Marx politically correct years before political correctness became popular?

The pipes don’t speak, or the tales they’d tell of their briar being harvested in one of the most inhospitable, unlivable, regions on earth under the complete control of among the most despotic and cruel foreign invaders the world has ever seen.

It’s better I suppose we don’t know the details of how Marx made the best pipes to smoke in the world.

 

[lraisch]

I’m such a leather tongued old pipe addict I don’t own a single light tan unsmoked Algerian briar pipe to illustrate the color of a new one.

Here is how they came new:

View attachment 260253

I love how the more I smoke a Marxman (or any other Pre 54 Algerian briar pipe) the darker and more reddish brown they get.

View attachment 260256
View attachment 260257

It may be that all of the coloring is external, from oil on your hands, or from the atmosphere. I know they’ll soak up grapeseed oil like a sponge, and darken from it.

But they’ll also color, I swear, while I smoke one. At the end of smoking a fresh Marxman it’s a visible shade darker, and all over the stummel , not just where I handle it. The more I smoke one the darker they get, until they are nearly black.

I don’t own any, but in the day Kaywoodie used to advertise tan Algerian pipes. Dunhill used to stain and sandblast his Shell pipes made of Algerian. I think most buyers of ten dollar Flame Grain Kaywoodies when a Yello Bole was a dollar and a basket pipe was fifty cents didn’t prefer a new pipe turning color like a cast iron skillet. Some did prefer a quick darkening pipe, or else Bob Marx would not have had a twenty year run of it.

Whatever the reason Algerian briar colors so quickly, I get all warm inside when I find one that’s very well seasoned.

View attachment 260268

It amuses me that a "massive, flawless block of rare-grain" briar has to have its flaws disguised by having great gouges carved in it.

 

[Briar Lee]

It amuses me that a "massive, flawless block of rare-grain" briar has to have its flaws disguised by having great gouges carved in it.

It does.

All Mediterranean briar is the same species, the exact same plant.

What made some of the Algerian harvest so much better to smoke was the horrible growing conditions near the Sahara Desert and on top of rocky hills where growth was glacially slow.

That briar is soft, waxy, hard to work, usually blandly figured and full of sand pits.

But it’s the best to smoke ever found.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Tomorrow it'll be Albanian briar.

 

[Briar Lee]

Tomorrow it'll be Albanian briar.

In the “cursed mountains” of Albania there might well be the same grade of briar Bob Marx used:

Xxxxx

Prokletije

Forming a natural border between Montenegro and Albania is a jagged spine of mountains called the Prokletije in Montenegran and the Bjeshkët e Namuna in Albanian. Both names translate to “cursed mountains”, likely due to their foreboding vertical spires, deep winter snows, and inhospitable ruggedness.

Xxxxx

The grade of briar was not because it was harvested inside Algeria, rather where it grew, in harsh conditions.

It colors markedly more, and quicker than briar grown in easier places to harvest.

 

[LeafErikson]

I prefer my Savinellis to my Algerian briars but I do agree that the Algerian briars you can get off of eBay are some of the best pipes you can get for under $20.

 

[Briar Lee]

I prefer my Savinellis to my Algerian briars but I do agree that the Algerian briars you can get off of eBay are some of the best pipes you can get for under $20.

Savinelli is a prestigious, name brand maker and uses good briar.

I own several. My Charlie Rich looking friend who sold meers by the boat load had a large selection of Savinelli pipes for the men who’d come in for service of the meer their wife, sister, mother or daughter gave them.

A good meer there, the one you’d want, started at $200.

$75 then would buy a Savenelli as large as a B or C size Marxman.

Presumably Savinelli uses briar from all over the Mediterranean and Italian briar comes in many grades. They’d pay less shipping cost for local briar.

Maybe there was something in the soil and particular climate of mountainous Algeria that made that briar taste as distinctive as cigar filler from Havana. The whole business of briar not just burning up like it should exposed to thousands of little fires kindled inside is mysterious.

But I’m suspecting all the Pre November 54 French colonial export grade of Algerian briar that Dunhill, Marx, Mincer and Edward’s, and others used was simply amounted to it being extremely dense from growing over a century instead of 30-50 years like briar from balmier and more temperate climates and fertile soil conditions. It could be from mountainous parts of Italy as well as it came from Algeria.


It is surprisingly light for the size.

All mature, well cured and seasoned briar is fire resistant. Old Algerian briar is extremely fireproof, bordering on asbestos, to another level altogether. Cake and lava forms on it but will not stick to it.

It’s soft enough you can scratch it with a fingernail.

There are on some smooth examples faint little growth rings or capillaries or lines caused by something, across the grain figure that are a hundred or more to an inch.

It colors that reddish brown starting on the first smoke.

It’s easier to carve or blast the parts too soft or full of pits to make usable pipes.

Why Savinelli avoided using it, and Kaywoodie and Lee, was the customer might buy a light tan pipe like this:



And a week or two later it would color to this:



Almost black, reddish brown pipes are an acquired taste.

Tom Howard Marxman homage
Marked Aged Algerian



Tracy MIncer Custombilt, Marxman style





But if you want to sample Algerian grade briar a very large Marxman is the cheapest and sure way to know you’ll get it.