Short post today. Feeling a little under the weather.
I have a great interest in pipe smoking. I like the smell of pipe tobacco, and the gear appeals to my instinct for fancy things. If it weren’t for a pesky family history of death by aortic aneurysm (all smokers, naturally) and the not-insignificant risk of some awful jaw-destroying mouth cancer, I would happily take up the habit. Alas, I can only fantasize.
It’s all about the image: Sherlock had his deerstalker cap and pipe, and now you can’t think “detective” without bringing in at least one of the two (L of Death Note being the great iconoclast). Victorique has the latter, sort of. Rather than the dramatic calabash gourd favored by the king of detectives, it’s a cute little white pipe with blue floral design.
Interestingly, the anime gets this more right than the original illustrations! As you can see, Victorique is supposed to be smoking a small, short-stemmed, solid white pipe, which means it’s probably clay or ceramic. And while those do exist, they’re a poor choice for smoking, since the smoke will get incredibly hot in a ceramic bowl, and enthusiasts insist that the material creates an inferior taste.
In the show, Victorique still smokes a white floral-themed pipe, but now it has a lengthy metal stem, more proper for a lady smoker of the time. The design also makes it more possible that her tool of choice is made of meerschaum, a rare Turkish mineral said to produce a fine smoking experience.
This is pure imaginative wanking. But anyway, nice pipe.
Screencap shamelessly filched from Listless Ink.
February 4, 2011 at 4:50 pm
She never actually smokes it in the anime though, so maybe it is ceramic and she just likes having it for aesthetic purposes
February 4, 2011 at 10:59 pm
I feel this may be due to TV restrictions rather than an aspect of her character. Itoh Nobue in Ichigo Mashimaro had to become a “college student” in the TV adaptation so she could smoke and drink as freely as she did as a high school student in the manga. (Never mind that she still wore a girl’s HS uniform.
)
February 4, 2011 at 6:05 pm
In the anime I keep expecting her to blow bubbles with her pipe.
February 4, 2011 at 6:58 pm
^This.
February 4, 2011 at 11:00 pm
I could swear this has happened before in anime. But I couldn’t tell you where from.
February 4, 2011 at 8:57 pm
The screencap also makes it look a little longer, which would also make sense. Short pipes make for rough smokin’.
February 4, 2011 at 11:03 pm
Yes, indeed. A metal stem is a good way to cool the smoke as it comes straight from the bowl… Or at least, that’s what I’m told.
February 4, 2011 at 9:57 pm
I always wondered about that pipe. Is she actually smoking something with it?
February 4, 2011 at 11:04 pm
She’s supposed to be, at least by the source. She picked up some not-very-appropriate-for-her-age habits growing up.
February 22, 2011 at 1:19 am
Prison will do that to you.
February 4, 2011 at 11:56 pm
If you like pipes due to the fancy nature of it all, I suggest you take up book binding. It’s incredibly cool – it’s all about the textures and the structure, which is what I’m assuming is what’s drawing you to this whole piping business.
February 5, 2011 at 12:13 pm
You know, I do like antique books, and one of the reasons is the often excellent thread-binding compared to the slap-on glue deals that we often get today. But it looks a bit hard.
February 16, 2011 at 5:33 pm
You can take a class and learn. It’s apparently not hard at all.
February 5, 2011 at 2:31 am
[...] some other reading on period appropriateness, check out 2DT’s post on Victorique’s pipe. For some actual review of this week’s episode, I’d suggest Emory Anime Club’s [...]
February 5, 2011 at 5:13 am
I was expecting bubbles out of that pipe! lol
February 5, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Great minds think alike, I suppose?
February 5, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Is she supposed to smoke or not? I keep thinking that it’s actually used to blow bubbles since I can’t imagine a child smoking. . . .
February 5, 2011 at 2:48 pm
From what I know (admittedly little), she’s supposed to smoke and has reasons for it. She just doesn’t in the anime, likely because of broadcast rules about minors doing such things.
February 5, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Ah, so that’s why we haven’t seen her smoke. I was wondering ’cause she always whips it out like she’s gonna smoke it but she never does. I thought she had the pipe purely for show XD
But anyway, thanks for the detective pipe info.
February 5, 2011 at 4:04 pm
I just love that she has a pipe at all. Especially one so cute. It matches her perfectly.
February 6, 2011 at 1:31 am
I like it too. Just jealous I can’t have my own.
February 5, 2011 at 8:10 pm
I was expecting bubbles…
and water…
who knows anyway.
February 6, 2011 at 1:31 am
All you people expecting bubbles, honestly.
February 7, 2011 at 6:07 am
And then I was exopecting soap…
But do they have soap in 1924?
February 7, 2011 at 8:20 am
Yes, soap is actually one of the oldest things we have, at least since the days of the Ancient Romans.
February 8, 2011 at 3:46 am
No wonder she acts like that, all the tobacco has clouded her brain :X
February 11, 2011 at 4:29 am
She also has magical script access. Gotta say I’m not enjoying the way these mysteries are “solved.”
Oh well. At least Victorique’s cute!
February 11, 2011 at 11:51 pm
I can just imagine a future episode;
Victorique: “See, look at this gun.
IT HAS THE CULPRIT’S FINGERPRINTS ON IT.”
February 10, 2011 at 11:03 am
I’ve smoked quite a bunch of different things using different media, but I’ve never really paid attention to pipes, and certainly didn’t know the differences between ceramic and meerschaum.
By the way, I have yet to see evidence of Victorique actually smoking. All she does is put it up to her face. I sometimes imagine bubbles instead of smoke coming out of it.
February 11, 2011 at 4:31 am
You are far from the first person to imagine bubbles.
But I do believe she’s supposed to smoke, even if anime won’t let her.
I’ve never really smoked at all, so all my knowledge about different types of pipes goes precisely nowhere. Well, a blog post.
September 1, 2011 at 2:01 am
Actually, being a pipe smoker, I disagree with your assertions regarding the materials used.
First of all, clay isn’t considered to create an inferior taste (rather the opposite, many consider a clay pipe to produce a purer smoke compared to a wooden (briar) bowl which is the most common these days). They are indeed recognized to smoke hotter, however, and you will often find them with longer stems and sometimes smaller bowls than briar pipes.
Ceramic pipes are a whole different story, however. Since I do not own one I can’t personally attest to any potential flavor imparted on the smoke (though I highly doubt there is any) but they are considered to smoke very hot and most likely wet as they don’t breathe the way clay and other materials do.
The pipe in the manga certainly looks like clay and is not a bad choice for a pipe. At the time they weren’t at all as uncommon as they have become these days. I haven’t read the manga and so I don’t know how much she smokes it or if there is any change in color. A clay pipe will, because it’s a porous material, suck up tars from the combustion of the tobacco and will with time turn a brown color. As far as I know ceramic pipes will not do this because of the higher firing temperature.
Secondly your thinking that the one in the anime is meerschaum because of the pattern is most likely wrong. If it was carved with a floral pattern it would be highly likely, but the fact that it’s a painted-on blue pattern is strongly indicative of it being a ceramic bowl with a ceramic glaze. Ceramic pipes are much more uncommon than clay pipes but considering they’re in the middle of Europe almost a century ago it’s not impossible. The stem is likely silver.
As a final note I will just point out that Sherlock Holmes did not, in fact, smoke a Calabash pipe. In the original works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle he smoked mainly clay pipes, turned oily and dark in color from his lengthy sessions. If the author of Gosick was indeed inspired by Sherlock Holmes it makes it even more likely that the original pipe is clay.
December 14, 2011 at 11:19 pm
In response to Anderson Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character mainly smoked cigarettes and cigars, with an occasional pipe. The image of the detective in deerstalker cap and Calabash pipe was the result of an actor’s first portrayal on the stage of Holmes outside of the print.
I’m in agreement that the pipe looks to have a ceramic bowl with a metal stem. Having served in Germany with the Air Force I’ve seen pipes like these there and in the Netherlands. Also, if this story takes place in the mid 19th century, then it would be appropriate for young people to smoke a pipe as that was common back then.
2DT, where could I find a copy of this anime? Would Amazon have it?
December 14, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Hi cully2010! Great to see a new face.
And thanks for the insight!
To answer your question, Gosick is legally available online (for US Internet anyway), through the streaming website Crunchyroll.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/gosick
It was licensed by Bandai, so I imagine a proper release won’t be long now. Thanks for the comment!
December 18, 2011 at 5:43 am
Thank you for the info. And after giving it some thought, it appears in both manga and anime that the Japanese characters treat their pipes more as a cigarette holder without the cigarette. They’re holding it and taking an occasional puff, such as Yuuko Ichihara, the space-time witch in Clamp’s XXXholic. In the Western world we (I’m a pipe smoker, too) would hang the pipe out of the corner of our mouths and puff away contentedly, because our pipes have a bigger bowl than what you would find on Japanese pipes. Anders would back me up on this.
December 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Thread depth limited to three, oh well.
@cullyferg2010: Yep, traditionally tobacco was smoked in much smaller bowls (even one-hitters) in Japan, just as they were here in Europe many centuries ago. Here they gradually became bigger, not so in Japan (until the globalization and large-scale import became feasible). The bowls of the traditional Japanese kiseru pipe has a circumference about as big as the diameter of a cigarette and aren’t much deeper, either. These days some people actually cut cigarettes in half a couple of times and smoke the pieces in kiseru pipes, somewhat like a very long and cool cigarette holder I suppose. The tobacco connoisseurs there smoke the same kind of pipes we do now, though.
December 24, 2011 at 1:26 am
Dear 2DT:
Rereading your intro about a family history of aortic aneurysm, I was wondering if the members of your family had smoked cigarettes. That would be the main source of this disease. And mouth and jaw cancers would be more prevalent among those who chew tobacco or dip snuff.
If you still wish to try a pipe, then I suggest getting one with a small bowl and half fill it with tobacco. Try it a couple of times to see if you are comfortable with it. The decision to smoke is yours, as it appears to be with Victorique.
Her appearance as a very young woman in the anime reminds me of the series Case Closed, in which the young Conan had been ‘youthened’ from his original high school state. It could be that Ms. de Bois (?) had been an adult and was transformed into this middle school detective. Maybe it came up in the anime and people had missed it.
December 25, 2011 at 1:20 am
They were cigarette smokers, yes.
I do think I’m going to take it up, once circumstances are right. Not doing something I’m interested in because I’m afraid of death in a few decades is rather silly.
Thanks for the advice!
December 29, 2011 at 1:09 am
Your quite welcome. Once you try you might find it enjoyable. Pipe smoking is far more pleasurable when sitting in a quiet setting, listening to music or reading a book.
I want to add a couple more female characters who smoked a pipe. In Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon series there was an interesting lady. name was Virginia Downspout who was the head of a very large publishing empire. I always thought of her as a most unique person that I would love to have met. She wore her hair in a 1920′s style crop, parted in the middle, and dyed green! She also wore a monicle in her right eye, a white dress that had a standup collar and pointed cuffs on the sleeves. And she smoked a clay churchwarden pipe!
The other woman was in Masumune Shirow’s Appleseed, the original manga. If you go to Book One, Volume Two there is a lady by the name of Athena. She is the head of government of Olympus. There is a scene of her on the observation deck smoking a pipe. And it isn’t a kiseru pipe but more like a modernistic Western pipe with a small bowl. There a few other scenes in the series of her smoking this pipe.
Hopefully this will give some other people a chance to recollect these characters. And good luck on taking up pipe smoking.
January 8, 2012 at 12:32 am
In getting back to the original question about whether Victorique de
Broix actually smokes her pipe, I would recommend going to the Safebooru website. Type in “pipe smoking” into SEARCH and you will get a gallery of images, mostly female characters, involved with smoking a pipe. And there are a few of Victorique actually smoking, with a streamer coming out of the pipe or her mouth.
Now that should settle the question.