Remarkably quiet month of visitors

28 February 2020

January is known to drop in visitor numbers, but it usually recovers slowly in the following winter months. If not this year. It is truly remarkable how few tourists have visited our museum this month. This makes it all the more striking that we are attracting relatively many Dutch visitors this year. Would the Amsterdam Pipe Museum still become known to the Dutch public? Due to the extreme high percentage of foreign visitors, we got the idea that our collection was only appreciated by people from afar. Be that as it may, everyone is welcome. So come in and have a look, museum card is valid, so nothing to prevent you? And, until March 15, the most special acquisitions from 2019 can still be admired.

End of the smoke pole in sight

12 February 2020

The National Railways have had smoke poles for years now on every platform, around which smoking is still allowed. This should end by the end of this year, in line with the general trend to combat tobacco consumption. The disappearance of the smoking pole heralds the end of an era in which cigarette smoking was tolerated. Nowadays smoking is surrounded with so many restrictions that it takes away your appetite. And rightly so, addiction is not a pleasure. We hope that the anti-smoke will make its mark so that in future we can take an unprejudiced look at the non-inhaling and enjoying pipe smoking. That should enhance the new bloom for our museum. Not the eternal association with only the bad aspects.

The first acquisition in 2020

4 February 2020

Later than usual, the first acquisition of this year came in today. It concerns the porcelain pipe bowl shown here. A so-called stummel, a common type but with a curious painting. In multi coloured hand-painting, two hands shake each other. Behind it is a flower bouquet with a German text along the rim of the bowl, something like "Roses are blossoming, and forget-me-not" and "flowers wither but real friendship does not". It is a typical farmers pipe from the nineteenth century, as a common gift at the time. They underline friendship and love. It is a genre that we are glad to add an extra copy to our collection, because these objects have become quite rare nowadays. Special here is the perfect condition of the object together with a pedigree that goes back over forty years.

First photo week of the year

2 February 2020

Photography is a job for the Winter in the Amsterdam Pipe Museum: the days are shorter, the evenings are longer and suitable for retreating to the photo studio. That's how it goes every year. This time it is late, early February that we can start, in December and January other tasks demanded our attention. Such photography is very satisfying, especially now that a considerable series of acquisitions is in store. At first there is the beautiful group of ethnographic pipes from black Africa. Challenging to tackle, but also difficult. The pipes in dark wood tones are difficult to visualize. Please check our online collection database for the first results!