Napoleon on horseback
January 2008
Tobacco pipes with a decoration related to Napoleon were made by the thousands. Napoleon appealed to the French imagination, but he also enjoyed great respect in Germany. This high, so-called Hungarian pipe bowl shows on the front a heroic Napoleon on horseback, the sword raised. Not a representation of a specific battle, but a general heroic scene. The date of this pipe is not to be determined by the main depiction but by the side of the stem, where some ornamentation with volutes in Louis XVI style have been applied which points to the 1840s. The hall mark on the silver mounting accounts for the year 1844. The maker is Heinrich Schilling, a Viennese workplace for meerschaum pipes. Even the silversmith is known by name, a man named Gross who, incidentally, specialized in pipe mountings, a lucrative activity in Vienna at that time.
Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 19.100
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