New issue

Issues of 2008

Smoking pipes: the lifestyle and the epoch

The smoking pipe is not only a device for smoking tobacco. It is also an object determining to a much extent the image of its owner. That▓s why the craftsmen always paid so much attention to producing these often quite expensive attributes of the tobacco smoking process. By carving these objects of craft, these artists expressed their ideas about the canons of style, beauty and elegancy.

The process of smoking tobacco in different epochs produced its characteristic smoking devices. Many of them featured especially interesting artistic designs, which makes one consider them to be real objects of the decorative applied art of a particular epoch.

Smoking pipe with a shank shaped as an old bearded man. Europe. XIXth century. Sepiolite, amber, carving. Private collection [zoom (43k)]

These smoking devices include the tobacco pouches, tobacco boxes comprising just jars and chests for keeping tobacco, snuffboxes, the latter often being made of precious metals richly decorated with jewels, enamels, etc. This range also includes the boxes for keeping cigars and cigarettes, i. e. the cigar boxes, cigar-cases and cigarette-cases. Speaking on this matter, one can not spare all kinds of cigarette holders and mouthpiece-cigarette holders. Various hookahs, nargiles, kilims (water pipes) can be added to this list.

On the above-mentioned list of items, the smoking pipes are of especial interest. They traditionally belong to male smokers, because they are usually stuffed with particularly strong sorts of tobacco. The ancient Indians of America are accustomed to smoking tobacco since the pre-Coulomb times, and after the Christopher Coulomb▓s expedition the smoking pipes appeared in Europe. The main distinguishing feature of the Indian pipes was the short length of their body (shank) ended with the bowl. That is how they look like in the ancient engravings by European painters depicting the every day life of the Indians.

Collections of numerous European museums feature smoking pipes produced just a little later in Europe, the earliest stemming from the 16th century. They are of a very simple form and have no decoration, except, may be only some light embossing at the edges. The simplicity of forms is also characteristic of the pipes dating back to the 17th century, mainly of the Dutch or English origin. These hand-made pipes also lack decoration and are rather practical, utilitarian objects, their creators and owners not considering them as objects of the decorative and applied art and as an elaborate decorative accessory of the man▓s costume.

Some old engravings dating back to the 18th century provide us with images of the old Turkish pipes having extraordinary long shanks. However, the shanks of the pipes smoked by characters of the William Hogarth▓s paintings are also of considerable lengths. Most probably, it is a result of the influence of the samples brought from Turkey, the Middle East and India, led to copying the Eastern style by home craftsmen.

In Russia, tobacco smocking has its own history (unique and independent from the Western one). The most probable source of the custom getting to Russia is not the American Indians, but the East, such Asiatic countries as China, India, Iran, etc. These countries have a long-lasting tradition of tobacco smoking, and it is more likely that it came to Russia via that way.

Smoking pipe with shank shaped as a dog at a tree stub. Europe. XIX century. Sepiolite, ebony, carving. Private collection [zoom (31k)]

The attitude to the habit of tobacco smoking greatly varied in Russia in course of its history in the range from total banning and severe fines to impassioned enthusiasm and development of a number of major enterprises. The attitude of various social groups to it also varied: when the high-society circles and intelligentsia indulged themselves in smoking tobacco, V.I. Dahl in his ╚Defining Dictionary╩ remarked as follows ╚The religious dissenters treat Nicotiana tabakum as an unclean, prodigal and diabolic potion belonging to Antichrist╩.

The ╚tchoubouk╩ smoking pipes came to Russia in the first half of the 18th century, in the times of the Tzar Peter I. The pipes that belonged to him are presented nowadays in some museums of Russia. However, the smoking pipes became really fashionable only in the 1820√1830-s.

In Europe, the period of the end of the 17th ≈ beginning of the 18th century was the one of switching to the new materials in the process of smoking pipes fabrication. The pipes acquired a more elaborate and decorative character. As previously, they were often made of ceramics, but now their almost entire surface was covered with painting featuring contrast colors, often with the one of human figures.

The first pipes made from wood appear to be of the German fabrication. They were chiseled from the light or the dark type of deliberately toned wood (beech, birch, alder, or walnut). In some countries, the other sorts of wood were also used, such as maple, bird cherry, sweet cherry, cherry, plum, and even such specialties as wild jasmine, hawthorn, boxtree and olive. These pipes were often decorated with plates from bone or amber of various colors ranging from white to dark brown (nearly black) and from other materials being high temperature resistant and suitable for carving, because decorating pipes with raised ornament plates became fashionable.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the secret of producing the hard porcelain was discovered in Meissen, which permitted to start the production of porcelain pipes in the second half of the century at the Sevres porcelain factory of France as well. These were plain white pipes with minimal decoration. In the next century, the porcelain pipes featured decoration of brighter colors and were executed in the form of a particular character▓s image like a warrior▓s head, a bearded elderly man, a girl wearing a hat, a carnival mask, etc. Sometimes, the pipes featured only small details of porcelain sometimes they bore a crest of the owner. Sometimes, they featured paintings of military scenes, Napoleon▓s or Prince Rudolph▓s portraits, or historical plots taken from the contemporary history of a period of the pipe creation.

Smoking pipe with a claw-shaped shank. Europe. XIX century. Sepiolite, amber, gold, carving. Private collection [zoom (30k)]

Since the middle of the 18th century ≈ beginning of the 19th century, the craftsmen of Austria and Hungary started to use widely the meerschaum material mined in Turkey and later also in Russia (Crimea). The word ╚meerschaum╩ means ╚sea foam╩ in German, alluding to its natural white color and its surprisingly low weight. This mineral, often having also the yellowish and grayish-white color, is easy to process. The craftsmen could create an object of smooth and wavelike lines resembling the streams of the following water. However, meerschaum is a very porous mineral that absorbs elements of tobacco during the smoking process, and gradually changes its color to the golden brown of amber and black of ebony. Old, well-smoked meerschaum pipes are prized for their distinctive coloring. The craftsmen often combined the meerschaum with metal or wood, or just made of it small plates of very subtle work, usually featuring heraldic or military figures.

The last quarter of the 18th century produced a fashion of decorating the pipes with erotic images of naked and half-naked figures placed usually at shanks and made of the bone or amber. These objects were high-valued and were characteristic of the aristocratic smoking rooms and salons and dwellings of the reach people. Today such pipes are quite rare, and one can see them in museum collections and in a few private ones. The next 19th century was the time of flourishing and widespread of the art of smoking pipes making. In most cases they were made from various kinds of wood and decorated with intricate carving. The pipes feature metal parts and plates from silver and mother of pearls. The mouthpiece was usually made of amber. The shanks were often produced from cherry. In the middle of the century, in Burgundy, the production of pipes from briar ((French) bruy?re) started. Briar is a particularly good for pipe making for a number of reasons. The first and most important is its high resistance to fire. The second is its ability to absorb moisture. The burl absorbs water to supply the tree in the dry times and likewise will absorb the moisture that is a byproduct of combustion. Briar is cut from the root burl of the erica, which is native to the rocky and sandy soils of the Mediterranean region. Later this material was used for the production of pipes in England and in Denmark.

Namely in this period, the complex compositions in the high relief technique became widespread. Especially rich floral ornaments are characteristic for this period. These pipes feature the figures of military leaders, soldiers, hunters, gracious deer and pheasants. In the second part of the century the erotic plots in the art of pipe-making start to emerge again.

In the second part of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century the pipes with long shanks started to appear. It were mostly the hunting sets usually comprised by five pipes. Such sets were kept in the countryside villas and mansions lying on the shelves and waiting for the groups of hunters▓ arrival. The hunting scenes and the human and animal figures became popular in that period. The bowls were usually executed in form of a man▓s head wearing a hat or a kepi. The art nouveau style provided the previously unheard of complexity to the design of these objects as well as the elaborate plastic and the new materials. It is in that period when the marble ceramics was chosen for the material for making pipes. The new design featuring only the bowl and the mouthpiece appeared. The mouthpieces were made from very different kinds of materials. The traditional horn, amber, bone and, later, ebonite were replaced by rubber and baquelite.