Amphora Original Blend. Made in Denmark. It’s often described as a “well rounded blend, emphasising the chocolatey flavour of burley tobacco,” and I would agree. I prefer other brands and mixtures with more personality, but this is a very nice tobacco for any occasion, and I’d even recommend it to the novice pipe-smoker. The pouch has darker colours — I had to lower the contrast so that the golden elements could be appreciated. The design is rather austere and doesn’t attract much attention. The single detail I really like is the ‘RA’ ligature in ‘AMPHORA.’ The health warning, as usual, is a sore sight.
Italia. This is the old pouch design of a historical Italian mixture. You can see the new design (and read a few reviews) on this page. A friend gave this pouch to me a few years ago. This tobacco is nothing special, and I’ve often smoked it in combination with other, more strongly flavoured mixtures. The new pouch design is a bit more elegant, but somehow I prefer this one, with its simple yet bold 1970s style.
Dunhill tobaccos (Ready Rubbed, London Mixture, My Mixture 965). These are among the first tobaccos I smoked. That tin of London Mixture was the one my dad gave me along with his Savinelli ‘Punto Oro’ pipe he purchased circa 1969. I love Dunhill’s designs (and since I bought these tins in the 1990s, the health warnings blended more in the design, thankfully), and I love even more the older versions of the round tins (see below), with the classic Dunhill logo in tall letters.
Capstan and King Charles smoking mixture. Both fairly decent tobaccos with pretty standard package designs. Capstan’s tin cap was very strong and tight and that helped preserve the tobacco’s flavour for a long time.
These two images are scans from an Italian book on pipe tobacco written by Giuseppe Bozzini and published in 1985. The original photos are credited to Nello Pozzato. These tobacco brands and mixtures were around in the 1980s. Some are still available, others may be not. Too bad the photos are black & white, but you can appreciate the varied package designs anyway. As I said before, Dunhill’s are my favourite, but don’t miss the typography of the square tins in the top image. Also, I can’t look at that Four Square Mixture tin (I tried it once and loved it) without being reminded of the current Microsoft logo…
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this brief exploration of pipe tobacco packaging and typography. Feel free to ask additional information on the subject by contacting me via email or Twitter or App.Net — I’ll see if I can help.