Tobacco was first brought to England during the Tudor period, and was smoked in a clay pipe. Clay tobacco pipe making began c. 1580-1585, probably in London, and spread across the country, springing up in the main cities and towns and especially those with access to suitable clay. Over the next 250 years, almost every city and town and many villages had a clay pipe maker.
The clay pipe industry peaked c.1700, after which snuff-taking became more popular with the upper classes, but the production of clay pipes continued and peaked again in the early-nineteenth century. Until this time, only England, Holland and Germany were making clay pipes but by the 1840s, France had also become world leaders in the craft, and pipe makers also operated in America and Canada and a few other places. In the second half of the nineteenth century the larger, more prosperous firms took most of the business and so the industry became more concentrated in cities and established towns and the cottage industry died out. London, Bristol, Manchester, Broseley in Shropshire, Stockton-on-Tees, Glasgow and Portchester were centres of pipe making.
The onset of World War I brought cigarettes and with wooden pipes and cigars becoming more popular at the end of the nineteenth century only a few clay pipe makers continued into the next century. By 1960 there were only a couple of makers left in England. During the 1970s the collectors boom created an opportunity for one family firm, Pollocks of Manchester, to rekindle interest in clay pipes as collectors’ items. This family firm had operated non-stop since 1879. Alongside Pollocks others revived old tools and some created a modern rebirth of the craft using a mixture of traditional and modern techniques, bringing the craft into the twenty-first century.
However, some of these valuable people have passed away in the last few years and there are only three clay pipe makers left in the UK, none of whom are getting any younger and there is need for the craft to be taken up by younger people.
Today, the main market for clay pipes is for film and TV, reenactments, smokers and collectors.
The traditional techniques for making a clay pipe were practised from the 1580s. Clays were prepared, and blanks or ‘dummies’ were rolled. A wire was inserted along the stem and the dummy was pressed in a pre-oiled, two-part mould. A stopper is then inserted to form the bowl and the wire pushed through into the bowl. The excess clay is trimmed off and the pipe left to dry before the final trimming and firing in a kiln. The pipe stem may then be tipped with glaze or varnish.
Tudor moulds were made of carved wood, but metals such as lead, brass, bronze and iron were subsequently used. In the nineteenth century, three- or four- part moulds were used for more complicated designs such as portrait pipes, and steam-powered presses were developed. Hand-finishing of special pipes in the nineteenth century often involved skills of incorporating coloured glazes or pipe parts of other materials. The craft involved men, women and children either a family with apprentices or a larger factory employing dozens of workers.
The press method is usually seen as the most traditional, but from the mid-nineteenth century the use of slip-casting in pottery was well established. Today, due to the shortage of original tools many people use the slip-casting method in plaster moulds. The advantage of using modern materials is that you can make a wider variety of designs, whereas using original tools means you are limited to the design that was on the original mould.
Historically, the fashions of clay pipes varied from town to town in such a way that it is possible for archaeologists to date a pipe to within a few years and attribute it to a town or region. Generally the clay pipe making craft was universal in its main manufacturing methods, but pipe makers in various towns and cities produced designs for local places and traditions. Broseley in Shropshire was celebrated for making the 25-inch (63 cms) churchwarden pipe. Very few clay pipe makers now produce pipes with local design due to the lack of moulds.
Related products include dolls limbs, fairings (cheap fair pots), small bottles, pottery kiln furniture.
Makers who are no longer producing pipes:
Several of the last remaining UK clay pipe makers have passed away in recent years:
There are another five craftspeople making pipes internationally:
Clay pipes not only tell the story of smoking and its evolution, but also reflect social and cultural changes. As tobacco became cheaper, the pipe bowls became bigger and the fashion of the pipes changed over the decades. They are exceedingly valuable to archaeologists and cultural historians because the designs and styles of the pipes help to date other finds, as well as revealing moments in time in our social history.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century pipes incorporate subjects such as: royalty, military events and wars, regiments, everyday life scenes, politicians, places, pubs, buildings, societies, masonics, working men’s clubs, advertising, celebrities, musicians and singers, poets, other famous people, peoples from across the world, story book characters, comedians, clowns, devils, monsters, cherubs, plants, abstract designs, and many more. There were tens of thousands of designs and the possibilities were almost endless.
It is known that in the seventeenth-twentieth centuries clay pipe makers also produced wig curlers, clay toys, whistles, shooting gallery shapes and beads, as well as pipe-clay figurines and some tiles. Clay pipes were also well known as being used in traditions such as morris dancing and other ceremonies as by the Masons, Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes etc. Another use was as a tool for blowing bubbles which was popular right up until the 1950s.
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