Roto Bowl Smooth Straight Billiard Sitter Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked [SOLD]

Description

As I’m listing a Kirsten tonight, I figured I’d list another fascinating pipe smoking innovation from the first half of the 20th century: the Ellsworth Roto Bowl. I’ll admit, I had to get a lot of the information about this one from Steve Laug’s Reborn Pipes blog. Here’s a summary of what I gleaned.

Created by American inventor Francis Ellsworth, the design was originally patented in 1935. Ellsworth’s intention was to create a pipe that could be smoked all the way to the bottom of the bowl (i.e., without the last part of the tobacco becoming too moist to finish), to condense the smoke so as to prevent moisture and tar build up in the draft hole, and to remove the need for a break-in process when the pipe was first used. When used, once around half of the tobacco in the bowl has been smoked, the idea was that the bowl could be rotated 180 degrees (hence the name), with the smoke then traveling through an alternate series of grooves before reaching the draft hole. There’s a lot to be said about this pipe, so I’d recommend looking at Steve Laug’s two entries on it. It’s certainly a unique pipe, and a window into the historical development of pipe design.

This Roto Bowl is also completely unsmoked, which appears to be very uncommon!

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.75 / 19.05mm

Bowl Depth: 1.02″ / 25.90mm

Weight: 1.0oz / 30g