How do you hold your pipe

[gkhanna74]

I am right handed -- I have my pipe in my left hand and left side of my jaw so that I can maneuver a pipe lighter and tamper with some accuracy to keep it lit. I also hold cigars in my left hand.

 

[ftrplt]

I clench; I hold. What ever works...I'm a pipe smoker!! ipe: FTRPLT

 

[Eulenburg]

My grandmother (a stickler for proper manners, including at the table) taught me to always hold the fork in the left and the knife in the right - even though one is right handed. I always assumed that was the proper way to do so (perhaps it is the European style?, as she was very much beholden to her upbringing across the pond?). Perhaps my old grams was wrong!

You grandmother was completely correct, when a knife is involved. Otherwise the fork is held in the right hand, if you are using a fork only.

American Midwesterners will hold the utensiles as you describe whilst cutting, then switch the fork from the left to the right hand to direct the food to their mouth. This is polite, but not very practical and totally unknown in Europe.

The Queen Consort of France, Catherine de' Medici, who was Italian, introduced the fork from Italy into France in the 1500s. It did not spread into general European use (among the polite classes) until the time of the Sun King (1600s), whose court manners were imitated everywhere. In frontier America it was not in general use until relatively recently (1800s.) Among the Russian peasantry, the fork was generally unknown until the Revolution.