170 TOBACCO-PIPES, CIGARS, ETC. 



The manufacturers seem to have rested content 

 with the fabrication of pipes after one fashion for a 

 very long period. We trace no attempt at fanciful 

 decoration or quaintness of form until within the 

 last twenty years. Before that time, the tobacco-pipe 

 makers only showed their ingenuity in occasionally 

 twisting their stems into convolutions and knots, such 

 pipes being hung in tobacconists' windows almost as 

 signs of their trade. The ingenuity of the French 

 artisans first exhibited the vast variety of design a 

 pipe-bowl might display ; and the higher artistic taste 

 of the Germans made their Meerschaums articles of 

 vertu. But before we take their works into consider- 

 ation, let us bestow a little thought on the manufacture 

 of the ordinary English article, which has thus been 

 excellently described by a writer in Chambers' 1 Edin- 

 burgh Journal, and to which we add a cut and some 

 further explanatory details. 



The clay from which pipes are manufactured comes 

 principally from Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, whence it is 

 transported to all parts of the kingdom. The first 

 process is the breaking and pounding the clay with a 

 wooden rammer, and mixing it with water to a consist- 

 ency similar to that of putty. The clay, at the requisite 

 consistency, then passes on to a man who pulls, twists, 

 rolls, thumbs, and kneads it out, with astonishing 

 celerity, into small separate long- tailed lumps, each 

 large enough, and to spare, for a single pipe. These 

 he lays loosely together in a heap, ready for the 

 moulder. The moulder, a skilled artisan in his way, 



