Naked woman with flower pot

May 2011

Naked woman with flower pot

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the tubular cigar pipe regained popularity. This new preference for simple pipes comes from smokers who have had enough of all those abundant decorations that were fashionable at the time. Those specific sleek products quickly inspire the meerschaum carvers into new figurations. They come up with pipes with a representation that, in terms of silhouette, follows the tubular shape but adds the decoration again. This pipe with its straightforward shape has been given an appropriate decoration by a standing naked woman holding a bowl with flowers above her head. The trumpet-shaped cigar holder is inserted between those flowers. As a matter of fact, such a naked figure was quite daring for the Victorian period and presumably this pipe only appeared in the men's room to be shown with pride to fellow smokers. The maker of this product is Ludwig Hartmann from Vienna, an established company founded in 1828. The Hartmann company developed into famous meerschaum makers, but they were also traders who had countless pipes made elsewhere in commission. This could be the case with this product, so we can not be sure of its origin.

Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 20.452



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