Dating Clay Pipes

[MisterBadger]

I dug up this humble piece of clay pipe stem in the garden the other day. These are a not infrequent find heareabouts and I just used to toss them aside as of no interest, because I'd always assumed you need the bowl shape to identify the period in which it was made. Turns out I was wrong: the thickness of the stem/shank and the diameter of the air hole gives you an approximate guide to within just a few decades. This one is 6/64ths of an inch, which gives it a 72% probability of being in the date range 1680-1710.

The method is accurate on both sides of the Pond. Thought it might be of interest to some.

 

[anotherbob]

that's just awesome. In a strange way they're that time periods equivalent of a cigarette butt. So funny to think that someone enjoyed that pipe and to wonder what they thought of cadence.

 

[Brendan]

@The Clay King

 

[ziv]

Fascinating!
Any idea what they might have been smoking back then?

 

[MisterBadger]

that's just awesome. In a strange way they're that time periods equivalent of a cigarette butt. So funny to think that someone enjoyed that pipe and to wonder what they thought of cadence.

...the garden was a garden then, and I also wonder what the smoker of that pipe was growing there. And what he liked to smoke in that pipe. And what he considered the best kind of feather for cleaning his pipes. And what he thought of the 1688 Revolution and the Protestant Suceession. And the rest...

 

[MisterBadger]

Fascinating!
Any idea what they might have been smoking back then?

Tonquin and deertongue and kinnickinnick (bearberry) were all known as tobacco additives in 17thC England by then, and N. rustica as well as N. tabacum, and I've also come across something called 'crocus' as a first-class expensive tobacco which, if you look at the pistils of a saffron crocus, suggests a shag-cut red Virginia. Apparently most tobacco came over to Europe as rope twists - perhaps similar to those Gawith and Hoggarth still produce - and by the late 17thC, they were growing their own in the Netherlands: I wonder if this was at all like the Belgian Semois we get nowadays?

 

[Boko_Fittleworth]

Very interesting!