Ceci est une pipe (12)
By: Joshua Glenn | Categories: Codebreaking

Click on image to enlarge

This poster, circulated c. 1973, signals the end of the pipe as an artifact of interest to us. With the end of the Sixties, the pipe became kitsch.* What’s more, the forces of Middlebrow ruined the pipe’s physical nature: the pipe blog Briar Files notes that the product advertised by this New Agey poster was

made from phenolic resin, with an inner bowl liner of pyrolytic graphite. It was available in every color imaginable, and many more hues unlike any known colors of the normal spectrum (avocado green?–hoark!). THE PIPE could be cleaned with soap and water. Or you could just remove the stem and blast it clean with a blow torch, since it could survive temperatures at 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Moment of silence, please.

* Note the timing. In 1975, George W.S. Trow made an entry in his diary lamenting the kitschification of the fedora. During the years 1973-74 all changed, changed utterly.

***


Twelfth in a series of twelve items analyzing and celebrating the pipe’s role in hilobrow culture.

Share

MORE POSTS by

Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and cultural semiologist-for-hire. He is coauthor and/or co-editor of TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY, THE IDLER'S GLOSSARY, THE WAGE SLAVE'S GLOSSARY, and — in 2012 — the object-oriented story collection SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS, and the kids' field guide to life UNBORED. He is editor of HILOBROW and publisher of the science fiction imprint HILOBOOKS; and he is co-founder of SEMIONAUT and the SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS experiment. In the '00s, Glenn was an editor, columnist, and blogger (BRAINIAC) for the Boston Globe's IDEAS section, and he was new media producer for the paper's LIVING/ARTS section. In the '90s, he published the seminal high-lowbrow zine/journal HERMENAUT; was an editor at UTNE READER; and was co-producer of the pioneering DIY how-to website and social network TRIPOD. Glenn produced and co-designed the iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He manages a secretive online community known as THE HERMENAUTIC CIRCLE. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC.