Two recent post posts by Jeremy Green concerning clay tobacco pipes have piqued
my interest. They were in response to a post by Patrick Smith which I must have
missed when our internet connection was down.
 
Mr. Green states that : It is interesting that stylistically developed pipes
were manufactured in large quantities in N Thailand, Burma and Laos and I
believe certainly predate European clay pipe manufacture. Unfortunately little
is known of their dating or chronology except for the pipe found on the
Vergulde Draeck (1656) See International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
15.2:167."
 
I must disagree with this. The English had been manufacturing clay tobacco
pipes for about 100 years before the date of this wreck. For an easy to obtain
quick example of the pipes from 1570-1580 to 1902 see Rapaport, Benjamin, 1979
A COMPLETE GUIDE TO COLLECTING ANTIQUE PIPES. Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., Exxon,
Pennsylvania.  For more archaeologicaly oriented illustration of pipe shapes
and sizes over time, see Osswald, 1960; Oswald, 1961; and Atkinson and Oswald,
1969.
 
Don Duco, a prolific writer on Dutch clay tobacco pipes mentions that William
Harrison, author of the "Gread Chronologie" recorded that in 1573 the English
were "greatlie taken up" with smoking of tobacco in pipes which he described
ass "an instrument like a little ladell." (Duco, Don, 1976, GOUDSE PIJPMERKEN,
Pijpenkamer Icon, Amsterdam, translated by L. T. Alexander.
 
The Vergulde Draeck sounds like a Dutch ship. McCashion (John H., 1979, A
Preliminary Chronology and Discussion of Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth
Century Clay Tobacco Pipes.  Archaeology of the Clay PIpe II, BRITISH
ARCHAEOLOGY REPORTS INTERNATIONAL SERIES 60:63-147) notes the earliest
discovered records of a lot of clay tobacco pipes aboard " The Rensselaerwyck"
in 1644. Individual clay pipes made in both Gouda and Amsterdam had already
been reaching Onieda, Cayuga, Seneca and other Iroquois sites by 1615 to
1635!!!
 
As for pipes in other parts of the world, the tobacco habit seems to have
spread as quickly as anything else does that is legal and addictive.  "As early
as 1604, a pipemaking guilde was established in Sofia in the Ottomman Empire
(Robinson, Rebecca, 1983, Clay Tobacco Pipes From the Keranikos. Sonderdruck
Aus Dem Mitterlungen Des Deutschen Archaolgischen Instituts, Athenishce
Abteilung, Band 98, 1983:265-293.
 
By the time of the 1656 wreck of the Vergulde Draeck, first western european
and then local tobacco pipe manufacture was very well established.
 
Smoke Pfeiffer
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