Engraved gooseneck pipe
novembre 2019
This silver pipe bowl is designated by collectors as goose neck. These have been particularly popular in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, of course among the more wealthy pipe smokers. Only the upper layer of societie could afford to smoke out of a pipe made in silver, thus underlining its own status. This silver pipe is particularly precious because of its beautiful, accurate engraving that has been applied to the pipe bowl and stem. Over the entire surface is convered with a pattern of curled foliage, surrounded by c-volutes like whiteheaded waves; not only the pipe bowl but also the moisture trap and the stem are decorated in the same way. Such pipes were mounted with an upright wooden stem with a curved end piece of buffalo horn or amber. In an exceptional case, the stem was also made in silver. Because silver pipes give the smoker a hot smoke, the pipe bowl was covered on the inside with meerschaum paste or a pipe bowl of pipe clay was mounted in silver. This material cared for the absorption of moisture, the remaining moisture was entrained with the smoke, condensed in the stem and finally collected in the convex moisture reservoir at the bottom of the pipe. After smoking it could be unscrewed to drip out. A dome-shaped lid with perforations completes the silhouette of this posh tobacco pipe.
Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 23.086
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