When Was the Briar Pipe Invented?

[foggymountain]

I heard it was about 200 years ago. Last night I was watching a Starz TV episode of the Black Sails series, which took place 300 years ago. One of the pirate captains was smoking a churchwarden with a wooden or briar bowl and a black stem. Was this an historical error?

 

[mso489]

Three hundred years ago sounds a little too early for briar tobacco pipes. I think French pipe makers lay claim to be

some of the earlier makers of briar pipes, and I remember that goes back to the early 19th Century (1800's). If I go

back and research it, I will report. Seems like earliest briar pipes would have been made in briar growing countries,

not France, but these origins are often blurry.

 

[ravkesef]

I believe the briar was first introduced into pipe smoking around 1850 in St. Claude, France. There was a legend that around a half-century earlier, Napoleon broke his favorite meerschaum, and a local pipe maker grabbed a chunk of briar and carved a pipe for the Emperor, but I believe this is a rather apocryphal tale. There were, of course, pipes made of different sorts of wood for centuries. Sir Walter Raleigh was smoking a pipe on his way to the place of execution, a pipe which is still on display at the Tower Museum, I believe. It wasn't briar, but it was some other sort of wood. King James hated tobacco, and this was Sir Walter's way of thumbing his nose at the king.

 

[sablebrush52]

Was this an historical error?

Yep, it was. Your pirate would have been more likely smoking a clay pipe, if not a meerschaum. The general history has it that Briar came into use in the early 1850's, with the trade originating in St. Claude.

 

[bluesmk]

Yep St Claude, here, check it out:

http://www.pipeewa.com/pipe2.htm

Dan

Gabrieli Pipes ::

 

[flakyjakey]

Come in misterlowercase, your lurking time is up! We need the bottom line on this AND real historical pics!!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

In reading about Pre-Columbian Native Americans, there are many references to wooden pipes. Pipestone was available, but just in areas that had it available. Plus, the people of the Western North Carolina region of the mountains had been making pipes out of wood long before briar was ever known about. They were practically cut off from all of the the rest of the colonies, mostly people escaping the church's influence over the colonies. So, I don't think it is extraordinaire to think that wooden pipes were available before the French started playing with briar. I would think that the Native Indians of the islands would have been using wood as well. Most of their belongings were wood, which explains why we don't have many artifacts from these areas.

Just a speculation, but better than just saying that we "only" had clay, since the white men learned everything we knew about tobacco from these natives.

 

[flakyjakey]

@cosmic, that is valuable historical information, and the native americans were surely the first to smoke tobacco and to use wooden pipes. But I wonder about briar? I believe it was derived from a plant native to the eastern Mediterranean and Asia, so who first started using it in pipes to smoke tobacco? Was it the French, and what are the first recorded examples?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

There is a lot of grey areas. Why are there some rare forms of pipes in ancient Celtic and Viking artifacts? Why did the Egyptians have tobacco in some of their pyramids (or tombs)? How did oriental strains of tobacco appear so quickly in history after the discovery of tobacco? When and where did hemp come from and get into the trade markets? And, was tobacco and hemp ever combined and traded? There are a lot of areas where we just don't have the valid recorded answers, and much of what we have in writing about tobacco and smoking in the New World is biased and gurbledy goop of superstitious people conquering a people they wanted to label as less-than human to justify their brutal tactics.

 

[jgriff]

I don't think the pirate depiction is necessarily wrong. Why do you assume it had to be briar? My understanding is the briar pipes were first carved in the 1840s in St Claude France but that other woods were in use before that. While clays and meerschaums were certainly more popular, boxwood & beechwood were carved by the same pipemakers beforehand that started the briar pipe industry. I can assume any other suitable woods were in use long before that too. The pirate captain may have had a hardwood pipe that wasn't briar.

 

[papipeguy]

Part of my original post was lost. The modern pipe cleaner, as we know it, was invented by John Henry Stedman & Charles Angel in Rochester, NY in the early 1900's.

 

[nsfisher]

and the native americans were surely the first to smoke tobacco

Nay mate. Native Americans smoked a mixture of Willow bark. White man introduced Tobacco to the Natives.

 

[peter70]

I don't doubt, that even before the discovery of briar for pipes, all sorts of woods were tried out. Probably one of the problems was taste during break in and another that most other woods would not sustain the permanent smoking of the same pipe, which was normal for the public. Clay pipes did not have any of those problems, but were prone to easier breaking, but because they could be made in high volumes (note, that at this time there was no automatic woodworking machinery, or copy mills, to produce high volumes of wood pipes), they stayed on top.

 

[chagovatoloco]

and the native americans were surely the first to smoke tobacco
Nay mate. Native Americans smoked a mixture of Willow bark. White man introduced Tobacco to the Natives.

Really, not that I doubt you but I would like to know more please explain......

 

[northernneil]

Nsfisher, I always understood the Native American's smoked kinikinik (not the correct spelling), which is a mixture of nicotina tobaccania and willow tree bark. Depending on the tribe, the mixture would vary. This tobacco mixture was used in their peace pipe cerimonies.
Now, tobacco smoked today is from the nicotina rustica strain. So, the Native American were smoking tobacco, but a very different strain from what is produced and smoked today.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

It's really not a this or that thing. Native Americans were smoking lots of strains depending on where the were. They were making cigars, honey/maple syrup aromatics, perique, etc... Like I was saying, most of "our" history of the Native Americans is a bunch of bunk based on a stereotype that we were trying to convey to justify our brutal techniques of disposing of them. However, in looking at what the actual natives that still exist say mixed with what we have recorded, we have a broader picture.
The whole notion of a "peace pipe" is like the stereotype of saying Squaw or Brave. It's wrong minded. They had daily smoking pipes as well as ceremonial pipes. White mans influence on tobacco is actually very small, unless we count what happened as soon as the leaf made it's way to Asia.

 

[dukdalf]

According to Rainer Barbi in a story recently re'printed' on this website, the briar pipe was invented by either Comoy or Courrieu, with the first name having evidence for briar manufacturing in 1860, the latter claiming to have started a full 58 years before. Liebaert and Maya just mention "around 1850" in their book 'The Illustrated History of the Pipe'.