Ancient Web: Look Out Now Catalogued Pipe Art and a Search for Condor

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A small tobacco-pipe hobby page sometimes contains three different kinds of collecting: objects, artwork, and addresses of people who know where to find things.

Visit Pipes and Tobacco and the Search for Condor.

This Look Out Now page is a personal index updated at least through February 2011. One of its offshoots, a three-dimensional cutaway of a pipe, is already covered in the Ancient Web collection. The rest of the index tells a different story about a collector arranging a visual scrapbook and preserving an old specialty community.

Its first section links a design submitted to a Le Nuvole competition, a pair of cartoons drawn for Pipe Friendly, and a series of photographs of handmade pipes. The entries name makers such as Preben Holm, Ben Wade, Maurizio Tombari, Paul Bonacquisti, Mark Tinsky, and Tim Fuller.

When the collection turns into digital sculpture

Another grouping presents computer-rendered pipe designs. Names like Star of Finland, Odin's Spear, The Starship, and Leonardo Da Vinci's Pipe make the models sound like a gallery of fantasy props rather than ordinary household objects. An animated AVI is listed as the smoke-ring piece.

The search for Condor is unusually personal. The author explains efforts to obtain Gallaher's Condor, an aromatic tobacco blend, by corresponding with potential suppliers and comparing notes about availability. The page reads as a record of a period collecting problem, not a present-day recommendation to purchase or use tobacco.

Finally, a link directory points readers toward other collectors' sites, pipe makers, forums, reviews, and galleries. Several addresses belong to now-discontinued services, including an AOL member page and a Yahoo group. Those broken or aging links mark the migration of a hobby community across the early Web.

The value of this index is not a claim that tobacco products are good for anyone. Smoking carries substantial health risks. What survives here is an example of how one enthusiast combined object photography, CAD-like graphics, small publications, and a specialized network of collectors.

A modern gallery would likely compress that into a social-media account. This one kept every alleyway visible.

Explore the photographs, rendered designs, and old community links.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.