Clay Tobacco Pipes

Clay Tobacco Pipes By E. Ayto. Soft back, 32 pages, Illustrated B&W, 15cm x 21cm.

 With your eyes glued to the ground you are bound to find these occasionally. It is useful to know how their characteristics vary through their 300 year history.

Contents:

• Origin & development
• Pipemakers
• Pipemaking
• European pipes and pipemakers
• Dating pipes
• Collecting pipes
• Further reading
• Clubs & societies
• Places to visit

On the back cover:

Although clay tobacco pipes are still made today their place in history is the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Until about 1890 the clay pipe was as commonplace as the tankard of ale and the mug of tea, but competition from the briar pipe, the cigar and the cigarette brought the clay-pipe industry to an end about 1900. Many people remember using caly pipes for blowing bubbles when they were children, and some can recall seeing navvies, or their grandfathers smoking them, but it will not be long before such memories are forgotten. These old pipes are now being eagerly looked for and picked up by the hundreds, and the enthusiastic finder is confronted with many questions. How old is it? How was it made? Where was it made? The aim of this book is to answer these questions and to record the part the humble 'clay' once played in our society.