EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN THE CLAY TOBACCO-PIPE
15
CHAPTER THREE
Evolutionary changes in the clay tobacco-pipe
EVOLUTION OF STEM-LENGTH AND SHAPE
AFTER the first few years of very small pipes with 3" or 4"
stems, the ordinary stem-length seems to have been
standardised at about 8" to 9", with increasing bowl-size, for
nearly the whole of the seventeenth century, although some
straight stems of 12" to 14" appeared after the Restoration. The
"Alderman", with a straight 12" stem tipped with glaze came to
popularity at the extreme end of the seventeenth century, and
in the early years of the eighteenth century, stem-lengths of 16"
to 18" were usual.
The enormous "Churchwarden" with stem two or even up to
three feet long, appeared in 1819 and survived until the end of
the nineteenth century, in competition with the "cutty" of 7"
stem, which eventually replaced it.
The "Churchwarden" is characteristic of nineteenth century
fireside smoking, its long curved stem enabling the smoker to rest
his elbow while still holding the bowl, while the "cutty" suggests
the pocket-pipe of the open-air man, gamekeeper, labourer, sailor.
In the North of England particularly, the common name for a
clay pipe throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was
a "broseley", for obvious reasons connected with the main centre
of its manufacture, but the Churchwarden soon got the name
"yard of clay".
EVOLUTION OF BOWL FORM
Although everywhere the general trend was from the smaller
to the larger bowl, in more detailed points of design it is by no
means true that the various centres of manufacture followed the
same sequence simultaneously. Throughout these notes, the
'norm' has been taken to be the pattern prevailing at the time in
the North Midlands, the principal pipe-producing area of England.
London pipes follow the Midlands sufficiently closely for all but
specialist treatment to enable them to be classed together in
development of stem and bowl.
An important exception from the Midlands is the product of
Broseley in Shropshire; the most notable distinguishing features
of many Broseley pipes being the heavy, so-called "heart-shaped"
foot (which is more often battledore-shaped in section), and the