Chinese pipe bowls for the opium pipe

24 April 2013

The opium damper is the name for the hollow bowl on top of an opium pipe, normally made out of Chinese ceramic. Most often two colours of stoneware clay are being used: the bowl in one colour, in which a decoration is engraved, filled in with contrasting clay colour. More rare are the glazed porcelain bowls of which our museum has some fine examples. See in this album how attractive the different shades of glaze colours can be.

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