Thanks for the ideas! He actually quit smoking a pipe before I was born, so there is no longer a tobacco scent, but I do remember playing with his old cob pipe as a kid.
I've just started using wonderclips, so it might be a good catchall for that. I might make a divider for the glass bowl, so that I can put safety pins in one sections, clips in another, and see if there is any need for another one. I don't have many buttons right now (I could dig through my mom's tin if I needed some).
If I use it to hold things like scissors, things with "points", I might make a little mat (like a tree skirt) for the bottom so that I don't scratch it up.
My plan in the next few years is to move into a smaller place, and will need to make sure a lot of stuff "has a function" on top of "looking cool". This has given me some ideas for something I definitely don't want to get rid of!