Clay Pipes: Old Or Modern? (With Pictures).

[mawnansmiff]

Last week I asked the forum if my small collection of clay pipes could be dated by the fact that they are painted in the mouthpiece. I asked as I intend to donate them to a local folk museum but would feel a bit of an idiot if I stated they were pretty old whereas in fact they could be of recent manufacture.
I was asked to supply photos so here they are. They are quite distinctive with some markings that mean nothing to me so any help in dating these would be great. If a maker could be suggested that would be the icing on the cake!
Pipe 1...

Pipe 2...

Pipe 3...

Pipe 2 clearly has what looks very much like a thistle on the front of the bowl suggesting Scottish origins and pipe 3 has a distinct maker's mark though I am unable to decipher what it actually says.
Any help would be much appreciated folks ::
I have tried to smoke two of these but for whatever reason I just couldn't get them to 'work'....there must be some technique to clay pipe smoking that I have yet to acquaint myself with :roll:
Regards,
Jay.

 

[prairiedruid]

society for clay pipe research
Maybe this will help.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Great pictures. I have had one clay pipe, but I hate the stems, even with the wax on the end. P&C has a clay pipe with a vulcanite (or plastic?) stem, which only kinda appeals to me, but it would be nice is some artisan made some unique clays with regular stems. The P&C pipes just lack a little... suaveness. The bands on them just look like they aren't sized to the pipe correctly. It would be nice to have a classic cutty with a nice stem.

 

[virginiacob]

Cosmic, here ya go: http://www.lepeltier-pipes.com/
Mawnansmiff - The clays look like the real McCoy but without any providence where the came from it can be hard to tell. A lot of modern clay pipe makers still use original press molds. We have a couple we use (circa 1900) with our clay pipe business but we put our own Maker's Mark on them to distinguish them from pipes made by the original pipe maker.

 

[virginiacob]

Meant to say provenance not providence. Darn spell check.

 

[akfilm]

Can't help with the OP, but Cosmic...http://www.dawnmist.org/pipesale.htm Cutty's are near the bottom.

 

[condorlover1]

The first two are from John Pollock

 

[mawnansmiff]

Thanks for that Condor. I suppose therefore they could well be recent models though possibly from old moulds?
Regards,
Jay.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Prairie, thanks ever so for the link, there's heaps of info on those pages!
Regards,
Jay.