Does anyone know about clay pipes?

[daveO]

I found this clay pipe on a farm where the ground is being dug out for a barn conversion. I go to it just before the diggers went over the spot. I'm just interested in how long it might have been there really. I can't find any marks or anything to indicate a maker but the lack of heel or spur seems unusual. Makes me think it's more modern and made for single use maybe?

and alongside a wooden pipe I found on the beach

 

[Toddy]

I don't know much about the clay pipes. I've dug up a few, and found an awful lot more (pieces) when fieldwalking.
If you type
dating a clay pipe
maybe add UK, into google.....it'll find you masses of illustrations and dates, etc.,

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=d...hVOEVAKHVDiA6cQ9QEIOTAD#imgrc=xXA7vLTPgTvKOM:

 

[Robson Valley]

At the early Hudson's Bay Company fur trading posts across Canada, those kaolin clay pipes were single use and tossed.
Since HBC is a British company with meticulous records, you ought to have an easy time of outlining the time window
for the use of those pipes.

Based solely on my experiences excavation fur trading post soils, everybody smoked like chimneys, they all used those pipes
as the fragments are about the most common artifact. Handfuls of them.

 

[Mesquite]

The smaller the bowl the greater the age.

Reason being when tobacco was first brought over it was expensive so was smoked in small quantities but as it started to be grown more and more commercially and taxed less bowls got larger.

Looking at your's it's probably mid 19th Century.

Google identifying clay pipes and you'll find lots of sites dedicated to the hobby

 

[Janne]

Were not these clay pipes one of the first massproduced goods?

 

[Mesquite]

Were not these clay pipes one of the first massproduced goods?

Chainmail and pins were both mass produced way before clay pipes

 

[Janne]

True, true, but I was thinking a form where several units are made at the same time.

 

[Toddy]

The Chinese, Koreans and the Romans all mass produced clay products long before the advent of tobacco pipes....thinking on it, so did a heck of a lot of other folks.
Those little Roman oil lamps are made in pieces in moulds and fitted together to complete; I suppose that's analogous to the pipes.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

Judging by the fragmentation, there must have been a compulsion to stomp on the dropped pipes.
Just once, we found a 1" piece which was a stem tip. Otherwise, the shards were like gravel.

Mass production? The ubiquitous amphora of the Mediterranean cultures. Boat loads of them.

 

[Janne]

Yes, of vourse!
And Roman swords and other arms.

Bronze blades were cast in multi use molds..

 

[daveO]

I don't know much about the clay pipes. I've dug up a few, and found an awful lot more (pieces) when fieldwalking.
If you type
dating a clay pipe
maybe add UK, into google.....it'll find you masses of illustrations and dates, etc.,

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=d...hVOEVAKHVDiA6cQ9QEIOTAD#imgrc=xXA7vLTPgTvKOM:

Thanks. I've been having trouble finding reliable sources on google as there's a lot of things reposted without crucial info included. I thought I'd found a likely guide but backtracked a bit and the original was for dutch pipes. One of the pages from your link lead me to the Museum of London page though and they've got a couple of similar examples dated around 1850-1910.

The history of the farm shows it was bought in 1875 by a wealthy chap who wanted to renovate it into a gentleman's farm. Most of the barns date from his ownership but bits of the farm house and one barn date back to 17th Century. The age of the pipe seem to tie in well with the renovation of the farm. A nice bit of history to go with the paperwork we've got anyway.

The only other fragment of pipe I've ever found was a bit of stem sat on top of a molehill. I need to keep my eyes open more by the sounds of it.

 

[Toddy]

I've already said that I don't know much about the clay pipes, but I admit that that example looked Victorian to me, but that was just on general finds, broken bits from field walking (all farm rubbish ended up on the midden, and the middens were spread on the fields, so we get masses of 'stuff' cropping up in newly ploughed fields) that someone who knew more said, "Looks Victorian".

Nice to tie it in though

M

 

[tombear]

How big is the hole down the stem? That's a general indicator of age, the wider the hole in proportion to the thickness of the stem the older it is. It's only a rough guide and there are always exceptions.

This is a useful site.

http://www.dawnmist.org/pipdex.htm

ATB

Tom

 

[Janne]

The clay they used, was it the same clay as when they made porcelain?

I myself have found quite a few of those broken pipes, but all were badly broken, no intact bowls , just pieces.
I preferred finding bottles, I collected them. Got rid of all, except an intact (sealing system and all intact) of a ceramic Ginger Beer bottle, made in Tunbridge Wells.

 

[Robson Valley]

All the pipe fragments that we ever found were snow white. Presumably, that's kaolin clay, as for crockery (always white with blue patterns).
I suppose that the Hudson's Bay Company sourced the clay pipes from ??? who knows where.
That should be easily determined in the UK.

We were digging with in the perimeter of the fort sites, long before there was any federal appetite for preservation.
I realize now that we should have gone searching for the middens = there are the ghosts of activities.

Doubtful that the clay was Canadian for Canadian sales. The clay industry in Canada is centered in southern Alberta, over spectacular deposits
still mined and administered by Plainsman Clay.

 

[Toddy]

It's not the clay, it's the firing.
These are biscuit fired, not hard fired. They're at the first stages of ceramicisation, and basically they were for light use and easily disposed. A hard tap out was often enough to break the bowl from the stem.
Made and sold for pennies, or given free with tobacco.

M

 

[Mike313]

Several decades ago, my brother was working on a farm in Ireland and found about 120 pipe bowls in a 1 acre field which had been ploughed for the first time in living memory. I don't think he ever found a single intact pipe, i.e. with the complete stem attached to the bowl although he did find bowls with a partial stem and also lots of broken sections of stems. Many of the bowls were plain, but others were decorated, some were surprisingly well made and decorated. Some of the bowls he found had a short 'rod' protruding from the base of the pipe bowl, apparently this was for the smoker to hold when the bowl of the pipe got too hot. He spoke to local archeologists and experts at the National Museum, they were unable to explain with any certainty why there was such a high concentration of pipes where he found them. I seem to remember that they were dated to 1840 to 1880 or thereabouts. Apparently they broke rather easily and were cheap to replace (as Toddy mentioned). On leaving Ireland, my brother donated the lot to the National Museum in Ireland.

 

[Toddy]

Probably a big farm's midden spread.

Honestly, once you find a site where the middens were ploughed in, and then it's been left fallow (i.e. no modern deep ploughing and metal harrows, etc.,) it's amazing just what comes up.
It's the ploughing, harrowing and harvesting machinery that shatters so much.

M

 

[daveO]

How big is the hole down the stem? That's a general indicator of age, the wider the hole in proportion to the thickness of the stem the older it is. It's only a rough guide and there are always exceptions.

This is a useful site.

http://www.dawnmist.org/pipdex.htm

ATB

Tom

It's about 1.5mm. The other fragment I have here is just over 2mm but the stem is exactly the same thickness. I didn't even think about the bore being significant, good tip.

 

[oldtimer]

Porcelain is fired at very high temperatures 1300c+. Clay pipes would have been fired somewhere around 600-800c. The lower temperature is enough to fuse the clay so that it can no longer dissolve back to its former state and it remains porous, porcelain on the other hand is vitrified and will hold water even unglazed. Higher the temperature, higher the fuel cost and other production costs. Clay pipes were cheap and disposable and bought in the pub along with the tobacco. I seem to remember them being plentiful and cheap when I was a child as I used them to blow bubbles with.

In my now long distant past, I tried smoking a clay pipe. It was not a pleasurable experience. In the first p!ace the smoke was very hot and made obvious the popularity of the long stemmed churchwarden model and in the second place each subsequent use made the smoke tarrier and fouler tasting. I suspect many of the pipes found round a farm may have started out as churchwardens and had been given a second life after the long stem had been broken.

Today on my mantelshelf is a churchwarden pipe that belonged to my father. I have no idea why he had it as he never smoked and since I gave up smoking forty years ago the pipe remains in smoked. Until I started reading this thread, I hadn't given it any thought, but contributors have given some good research sources. Looks like my evening's reading has been sorted! So thanks for starting the thread and lighting up my interest, if not the pipe.