From the Editor: Trevor Barton was a British pipe collector that favored historical non-briar pipes, such as: native American, tribal, ceremonial, art pieces, porcelain, ivory, and meerschaum. He ammassed a huge collection of pipes, along with smoking ephemera such as tobacco boxes, carved wood pipe cases, books, and large tobacco advertising figures in carved wood.
Via Press Release: Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers are to disperse one of the world’s finest collections of pipes and smoking accoutrements across a number of sales this year. The Trevor Barton (1920-2008) collection represents more than 50 years of acquisition and study, by a Hertfordshire pipe collector known to many in the antiques trade as ‘The Pipe Man’.
Mr. Barton began collecting pipes and other tobacco-related items in 1947, shortly after he was demobbed (British for discharged from the military). His son (also Trevor) recalls life in a small Tudor cottage in Hertfordshire surrounded by hundreds of pipes and regular visits from other enthusiasts, including fellow members of the Academie Internationale de la Pipe (the collecting association formed in 1984). “Dad was a true collector. One day he bought an antique pipe on a London street market. Within a few weeks he had ten, then 20. The collection then just kept growing for the next 50 years.” His father would unfailingly rise before dawn every Friday to attend Bermondsey market and then Portobello on Saturdays – the stallholders all familiar with ‘The Pipe Man.’
Tobacco smoking was part of religious rituals in Central America for a millennium before Spanish settlers first brought it to Europe. Mr Barton’s particular interest was tribal and ethnographic items from all corners of the world – including North America, Africa and the Far East. He travelled widely during a sales and marketing career which helped him to grow his collection.
His hero was William Bragge, a 19th century master cutler from Sheffield, who amassed a collection of over 7000 pipes and accessories that were dispersed in the 1880s (many went to the British Museum). After a chance meeting with Bragge’s grand-daughter, Mr Barton bought some of his notebooks and drawings and in 1991 published the hardback catalogue A Portfolio of William Bragge and his Pipes of all Peoples. It is itself a collector’s item today, and copies will be sold at Sworders.
The collection includes many English pipes and tobacco-related items from the Georgian and Victorian centuries made in a wide variety of materials: metal, wood and pottery and the hydrous silicate of magnesium (better known as meerschaum) that took European pipe-making to its zenith in the 19th century. Meerschaum pipes could be easily carved into elaborate designs, some of them serious, some of them downright racy.
Selected items from the Barton collection were sold at Christie’s in 2010, but the remainder were kept by the family. Part I of the collection will form part of Sworders’ Fine Interiors auction on September 22-23. Part II will be sold within Sworders’ Timed Homes & Interiors auction (October 9-18) and Part III (Chinese and Japanese pipes) will form part of Sworders’ Asian art auction on November 6.
Highlights include an early 18th century Japanese lacquer double clay pipe case, similar to another in the Rijksmuseum Collection, Amsterdam (estimate £1500-2000) and a mammoth ivory pipe made by the Samoyed people of East Siberia, that was chosen as the illustration on the spine of Alfred Dunhill’s The Pipe Book – this is included in the lot (estimate £2000-3000). A Prattware coiled pipe, elaborately coiled and painted in ochre and blue dashes c. 1820 is expected to bring £400-600.
A rare Japanese lacquer double clay pipe case
Trevor Barton Pipe Collection Goes to Auction
I’m feeling much better about myself since reading this, at least with regard to my having too many pipes. Should be a great auction.
Kevin: so very, very pleased that you posted this review of my old (departed) friend, J. Trevor. As William Bragge was Trevor Sr.’s role model and inspiration, Trevor Sr. was my role model and inspiration. I visited his thatch-roofed 17th C. cottage many times, and salivated at all the wonders of the pipe world that he had amassed in his lifetime. Appreciate that, along with the multitude of contemporary pipe and tobacco articles that you have had posted since launching this website, you have seen fit to spotlight the foremost British antique pipe collector of the late 20th – early 21st century. Thank you!
Wow Ben! That is so cool that you knew him, and visited his cottage. Thank you for the compliment.
What a collection!!!