THE ANTIQUE TOBACCO PIPE

Tobacco pipes have been around for about 500 years. The generally accepted evidence, often reprised in many treatises on the history of pipes, is an illustration of a man smoking a clay pipe that appeared in Anthony Chute, Tobacco (1595). Thus, one can conclude that clay pipe-making had to have begun around that time. The earliest clays were simple, utilitarian, commonplace utensils, mere conveyances for holding tobacco. Eventually, three other types of pipes became what are considered, today, “high art” forms.

First, a look back at the early world of pipe materials, writ large. According to the 1894 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The regular pipe-making industries divide into many branches, of which the more important are the clay pipe, meerschaum (real and artificial), and wooden bowl trades.” Not quite a complete list.

W. A. Penn, (1902), expressed it more expansively: “Though pipes are fashioned from such varied materials as wood, stone, bronze,