Mephisto cigar holder

September 2006

This expressive cigar holder portrays the head of the demon Mephistopheles as the literature and the theater world often depicts him. A man's portrait with a narrow, skinny face with a mustache and long goatee, two horns on the forehead. His skull is covered with a fur-lined executioner hood with some playful feathers on the left. Special about this pipe is the insert with glass paste eyes, which make the portrait a lot more expressive. Mephistopheles has been depicted more often over time, but by the end of the nineteenth century this design was the most popular. The pipe aimed at a more literary target group, the well-read smoker who at least read Goethe's Mefisto. The simple version of such a pipe could also have been chosen by a more bourgeois person, judging that it represents just a devil which is of course another interpretation. This beautiful pipe is in sublime condition because it has never been smoked. The pipe is still in its original case, marked on the inside in gold leaf with "CROWN PIPE", including the initials of the maker or seller. The addition "VIENNA MADE" does not guarantee that the pipe has actually been carved in Vienna, although the quality is such that it is very well possible.

Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 18.057

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