Ostrich with horseshoe

November 2004

This decorated pipe bowl was found in Haarlem and fits well with the image we have of Haarlem smokers from the first quarter of the eighteenth century. They usually opted for common pipes with a simple decoration on the bowl. This is a striking relief decoration consisting of an ostrich standing on either side of the bowl with a horseshoe in the beak. The depiction of this exotic bird has been widely used since the seventeenth century, with the horseshoe rarely missing in the beak. It seems that the engraving on this pipe has been taken from a seventeenth-century print, on which countless chiseled gable stones with that same representation also fall back. Maker of the pipe bowl is the Boudewijn Claris from Gouda, owner of the initial mark BC. He placed that mark very modestly on the left side of the pipe just above the spur. On the other side we see a rosette as a mould mark and that may indicate that Claris owned a second copy of this engraved press mould.

Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 17.450

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