Pregledni rad
Meerschaum pipes and cigarette holders from the collection of personal items from the Museum of Slavonia – foam of the sea in the cloud of smoke
Andreja Šimičić
; Muzej Slavonije, Osijek
Sažetak
This text describes a part of the museum research regarding the professional manufacture of pipes and smoking accessories from the Artistic Crafts and Design Department of the Museum of Slavonia. A section of pipes and cigarette holders made from the mineral meerschaum was selected from the Collection of Personal Items, 24 pipes and 8 cigarette holders in total.
Meerschaum is the mineral sepiolite, hygroscopic magnesium silicate created by the erosion of serpentine, also known by its poetic name foam of the sea. It can be worked easily and it looks nice, and during the 19th century it was a favourite material in the European pipe making workshops.
Meerschaum pipes kept in the Collection of Personal Items of the Museum of Slavonia were made during the 19th century in the workshops of Central Europe, mostly Vienna and Hungary. There are no items made domestically, same as there are no known workshops for making meerschaum pipes in Osijek and the surrounding area that can be found in literature.
We have the two basic types of pipe decorations in the museum collection, simple pipes without decorations and pipes with rich relief decorations. The cap at the top of the chamber is specific for both types - silver, brass, or cast from alpaca silver, and the plating on the top of the pipe shank is cast or pressed from the same metal. The most numerous are the carved pipes from the group of the so called falsely dated pipes, six pipes in total, made during the second half of the 19th century in Hungarian workshops.
Two of the pipes are of exceptional quality. A pipe made in Vienna in the 1830s, owned by the landowner from Osijek Ferdinand K. Schmidt, with an elaborately carved pipe bowl and flat bottom accentuated with silver plating. Silver plating and the cap are also decorated with elaborate reliefs. The other pipe probably comes from the male member of the family of counts Pejačević, with a high quality family crest carved on the front of the pipe bowl. The cap and the plating are made of silver, with a stamp for Vienna and a partially legible master’s stamp (GW).
Among the pipes without decorations, we have pipes shaped like a swan’s neck and pipes with tall cylindrical bowls. They mostly have thin bowls, highly elegant, and their surfaces are usually interestingly coloured with the shades of ivory, through honey, to dark brown colours, which are usually formed as the temperature of the sepiolite rises.
Master carvers have signed several pipes by pressing in their master’s stamps, usually on the rim of the pipe shank (Henrik Martiny, J. Hitschman, and an undetermined master Pettico).
The pipes are of various types, and their quality varies from average quality pipes made in batches at workshops to valuable high quality pieces, marked with a master’s stamp. According to their artistic finishing and the harmony of form, decorations, and metal pieces, the most valuable are the custom made ones, with engraved family names, monograms, or family crests.
Smoking cigarettes also introduced the fashion of using a new utility item - the cigarette holder. It is defined as a specially made and finished small tube, used for inserting the cigarette before smoking. Vienna was an important centre for the production of artistically finished meerschaum cigarette holders. Eight of them are kept at the Museum of Slavonia, and they come in two different types, cigarette holders shaped like pipes and simple cylindrical cigarette holders.
The types of cigarette holders made during the 19th century are varied, elaborately decorated and made from expensive materials. As much as seven cigarette holders from the museum collection belong to the group of cigarette holders shaped like pipes, only one cigarette holder is shaped like a simple cylindrical tube, made from a simple wooden tube, and only its tip is made of meerschaum.
With different types of pipes, there are also different types of cigarette holders shaped like pipes.
Three cigarette holders stand out, elaborately carved, of high quality and made in an Austrian workshop, they are kept in their original etuis. They consist of two pieces – the meerschaum head and horn or amber mouth piece.
At the end of the text there is a Catalogue of items made of meerschaum with catalogue information, description, and a photograph.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
217724
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.5.2017.
Posjeta: 1.637 *