Found an old tobacco pipe

[swellmell]

Found some scrap and this old pipe today I’m trying to find out what it’s made of! Any suggestions will be appreciated. It came out of the dirt looking like this but I did remove dirt from the bowl.

 

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[UnderMiner]

Looks like a clay pipe, probably early-mid 1800's! I'm no expert on pipes but rule of thumb for determining age is the size of the bowl. The earliest clay pipes had small bowls as tobacco was very expensive an even rich ppl couldn't afford much. As tobacco got cheaper over the decades the pipe bowls increased in size. I'm also quite certain that the fancier looking pipes such as this one came about later in the history of tobacco. The earliest pipes were very simple, plain looking, and were meant to be cheap and disposable. This one looks to have had a bit more value to it.

 

[swellmell]

Thank you UnderMiner great information very helpful!

 

[Thoadin]

Yep, looks like a clay pipe from the 1800s. Nice find!

 

[Red-Coat]

Nice to see a complete unbroken bowl. It’s a reed-stem elbow pipe in a style known as ‘ribbed/milled Chesterfield’. That particular style was commonly produced by the Akron Pipe Smoking Company of Mogadore, Ohio and associated businesses/factories under its control, including the Pamplin factory in Virginia. They usually date between about 1880-1895. There were numerous smaller competitors too.

These pipes were produced using local clays: either stoneware (sometimes referred to as ‘Shakers’ because of similarity in finish to New York Shaker pipes produced between about 1809 and 1853); or in earthenware (sometimes referred to as ‘Hamburgs’). It’s not a hard and fast distinction, but yours looks to be stoneware.

Sometimes there will be mould marks (symbols, letters or numbers) inside the bowl at the bottom that attribute them more precisely, so have a good look with a flashlight. Sometimes you can read the mark(s) better by pressing a piece of plasticine or Blu-Tack into the bowl to transfer the impression.

 

[thrifty76now]

A clay pipe,and it is very neat.

 

[swellmell]

Thank you Red-Coat Very helpful information. I hesitate to clean it much i havent even washed the dirt off. Do you have any suggestions about cleaning it or is it best just to leave it as it is? Thanks!

 

[Red-Coat]

You're very welcome. If it has no cracks, I wouldn't worry about giving it a rinse under the tap and then drying with a paper towel. If you're concerned, just clean off as much dirt as you can by wiping with a barely damp cloth and use a dry paintbrush (artist's-type) for the inside of the bowl.

 

[JeffInMass]

Very cool find- Congrats!

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Very nice personal item recovery, congrats!

 

[swellmell]

Thank you! Its always a surprise to find something non metallic metal detecting, I'm lucky to find it!

 

[Trezurehunter]

That bowl is in very good shape. You were lucky to have found it like that.

 

[Indian Steve]

Red-Coat is right. I dug around 18,000 clay pipes in Mogadore in the late 1960s and early 70s. The ones that I dug were all factory rejects. They had a 70% to 80% failure rate in the kilns. I even dug up huge clusters of them glazed together where the shelf collapsed during firing in the kiln. Yours is a nice one. I cleaned all of mine with water and a tooth brush. As long as you don't drop them on concrete or something hard, they are hard to break. I sold mine at flea markets all over the east coast out of the back of a1937 Plymouth. In 1972, I was selling them for 50 cents a piece or $5 a dozen. They are worth quite a bit more now.

 

[Relicific]

Very nice

 

[xcopperstax]

Nice to see a complete unbroken bowl. It’s a reed-stem elbow pipe in a style known as ‘ribbed/milled Chesterfield’. That particular style was commonly produced by the Akron Pipe Smoking Company of Mogadore, Ohio and associated businesses/factories under its control, including the Pamplin factory in Virginia. They usually date between about 1880-1895. There were numerous smaller competitors too.

These pipes were produced using local clays: either stoneware (sometimes referred to as ‘Shakers’ because of similarity in finish to New York Shaker pipes produced between about 1809 and 1853); or in earthenware (sometimes referred to as ‘Hamburgs’). It’s not a hard and fast distinction, but yours looks to be stoneware.

Sometimes there will be mould marks (symbols, letters or numbers) inside the bowl at the bottom that attribute them more precisely, so have a good look with a flashlight. Sometimes you can read the mark(s) better by pressing a piece of plasticine or Blu-Tack into the bowl to transfer the impression.

The pipemaster has spoken! Great find though. It's pretty hard to find a "complete" clay pipe and I'd say you did it there!

 

[A2coins]

Thats a nice display piece most found are broken Great save