Quintessential Quintessential is a Cornish family run business. They’ve been making the UK’s first and best loved smoking roach tips since the early 1990’s using various environmentally friendly papers including FSC, Recycled and 100% Pure Hemp, tree-free papers and vegetable based inks.

The húlu ( 葫芦/ 葫蘆), as the calabash is called in Mandarin Chinese , is an ancient symbol for health. Hulu had fabled healing properties due to doctors in former times carrying medicine inside it. The hulu was believed to absorb negative, earth-based qi (energy) that would otherwise affect health, and is a traditional Chinese medicine cure. The bottle gourd is a symbol of the Eight Immortals, and particularly Li Tieguai, who is associated with medicine. Li Tieguai's gourd was said to carry medicine that could cure any illness and never emptied, which he dispensed to the poor and needy. [33] [34] Some folk myths say the "gourd had spirals of smoke ascend from it, denoting his power of setting his spirit free from his body," [35] and that it "served as a bedroom for the night..." [34] The gourd is also an attribute of the deity Shouxing and a symbol of longevity. [36] A variety of other materials may also be used for pipes. The Redmanol corporation manufactured pipes with translucent stems in the 1920s and a series of pipes were manufactured and distributed by the Tar Gard (later Venturi) Corporation of San Francisco from 1965 to 1975. Marketed under names such as "the pipe", "The Smoke" and "Venturi", they used materials such as pyrolytic graphite, phenolic resin, nylon, Bakelite and other synthetics, allowing for higher temperatures in the bowl, reduced tar, and aesthetic variations of color and style. [19] Calabash ( / ˈ k æ l ə b æ ʃ/; [2] Lagenaria siceraria), also known as bottle gourd, [3] white-flowered gourd, [4] long melon, birdhouse gourd, [5] New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, [6] and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh.

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The calabash is used as a resonator in many string instruments in India. Instruments that look like guitars are made of wood, but can have a calabash resonator at the end of the strings table, called toomba. The sitar, the surbahar, the tanpura (north of India, tambura south of India), may have a toomba. In some cases, the toomba may not be functional, but if the instrument is large, it is retained because of its balance function, which is the case of the Saraswati veena. Other instruments like rudra veena and vichitra veena have two large calabash resonators at both ends of the strings table. The instrument, Gopichand used by the Baul singers of Bengal is made out of calabash. The practice is also common among Buddhist and Jain sages. [39] In Vietnam, it is a very popular vegetable, commonly cooked in soup with shrimp, meatballs, clams, various fish like freshwater catfish or snakehead fish or crab. It is also commonly stir-fried with meat or seafood, or incorporated as an ingredient of a hotpot. It is also used as a medicine. Americans have called calabashes from Vietnam "opo squash". Your Guide to the Top 5 Calabash Pipe BrandsTo produce a truly outstanding item, expert artists must use these special smoking instruments, which are distinguished by their characteristic gourd-shaped bowls and meerschaum or briar inlays. The mineral [meerschaum] is principally used however as a material for tobacco pipes, which, when made, are soaked in melted tallow, then in white wax, and finally polished with shave-grass. If genuine, a meerschaum pipe acquires a beautiful brown colour after being smoked for some time, the oil of the tobacco being absorbed by the clay; and this is a point to which connoisseurs in smoking attach much importance.” (“MEERSCHAUM PIPES,” Charles Knight, Knight’s Cyclopædia of the Industry of All Nations, 1851, 1187)

Featuring elements reminiscent of Victorian lamps and Victorian ironwork, this Victorian Cavalier Calabash is something that Adam sketched out roughly as soon as he heard the idea for this year's exposition, and the execution is definitive. It's quite large overall — it's about the same length as my entire torso — but the chamber and overall posture make it still a very practical size for smoking. These toombas are made of dried calabash gourds, using special cultivars that were originally imported from Africa and Madagascar. They are mostly grown in Bengal and near Miraj, Maharashtra. These gourds are valuable items and they are carefully tended; for example, they are sometimes given injections to stop worms and insects from making holes in them while they are drying.Like other members of the family Cucurbitaceae, gourds contain cucurbitacins that are known to be cytotoxic at a high concentration. The tetracyclic triterpenoid cucurbitacins present in fruits and vegetables of the cucumber family are responsible for the bitter taste, and could cause stomach ulcers. In extreme cases, people have died from drinking the juice of gourds. [20] [21] [22] Ho, Kwok Man (1990). The Eight Immortals of Taoism: Legends and Fables of Popular Taoism. Translated and edited by Joanne O'Brien. New York: Penguin Books. pp.93–94. ISBN 9780452010703. Furthermore, Ryan has expanded boundaries in terms of engineering, particularly the idea of Calabash functionality. The largest section of bamboo serves as the main condensation or cooling chamber, but then, at the foot and in the last section of bamboo, he's stepped the internal drilling up and down. That stepping creates additional turbulence and helps to separate even more moisture from the smoke. That innovative approach to the internals is what we love to see in this challenge — that pipe makers are not only challenging aesthetics and challenging form, but also challenging function. When tobacco is burned, oils from adjoining not yet ignited particles vaporize and condense into the existing cake on the walls of the bowl and shank. Over time, these oils can oxidize and turn rancid, causing the pipe to give a sour or bitter smoke. A purported countermeasure involves filling the bowl with kosher salt and carefully wetting it with strong spirits. [ citation needed] It is important to not use iodized salt, as the iodine and other additives may impart an unpleasant flavor. Regularly wiping out the bowl with spirits such as vodka or rum is helpful in preventing souring. Commercial pipe-sweetening products are also available. [ citation needed] See also [ edit ] The Peterson Dry System was unveiled during these early years. Peterson Pipe’s other famous differentiator, the P-Lip Stem, was also born during these years. Many of these early pipes were made out of Meerschaum or clay. Very different from the briar pipes the brand is famous for today.

A hookah, ghelyan, or narghile, is a Middle Eastern water pipe that cools the smoke by filtering it through a water chamber. Often ice, cough-drops, milk, or fruit juice is added to the water. Traditionally, the tobacco is mixed with a sweetener, such as honey or molasses. Fruit flavors have also become popular. Modern hookah smokers, especially in the US, smoke "me'assel", "moassel", "molasses" or "shisha", all names for the same wet mixture of tobacco, molasses/honey, glycerine, and often, flavoring. This style of tobacco is smoked in a bowl with foil or a screen (metal or glass) on top of the bowl. More traditional tobaccos are "tombiek" (a dry unflavored tobacco, which the user moistens in water, squeezes out the extra liquid, and places coals directly on top) or "jarak" (more of a paste of tobacco with fruit to flavor the smoke). When European traders discovered this land and making their tobacco, they introduced the smoking habit among the natives. It was natural that after a while they end up using pumpkins to make their own pipes. To avoid burns they covered it inside the dried fruit with clay and fixed a hollow stem to the tip. It was the beginning of Calabash pipe

Rolling Papers If you prefer premium quality tobacco, you’ll need an equally excellent rolling paper to wrap around it so you get the maximum enjoyment from your smoke break. We’re proud to offer a vast selection of papers in a choice of size, weight and material from natural unbleached organic hemp to lightweight rice paper specially designed to suit the modern RYO smoker’s every need. Every pipe comes in a completely custom fitted case. Being a natural product each one is “unique” and every single pipe has different patterns and a slightly different shape First crop is ready for harvest within two months; first flowers open in about 45 days from sowing. Each plant can yield 1 fruit per day for the next 45 days if enough nutrients are available. Kalm, Pehr (1772). Travels into North America: containing its natural history, and a circumstantial account of its plantations and agriculture in general, with the civil, ecclesiastical and commercial state of the country, the manners of the inhabitants, and several curious and important remarks on various subjects. Translated by Johann Reinhold Forster. London: T. Lowndes. p. 344. ISBN 9780665515002. OCLC 1083889360.