Pipe Item Number: 3260/34 from the MOA: University of British Columbia

Description

Pipe bowl in the shape of a baby bird with its mouth open wide. The mouth is rimmed with copper. The stem hole is in the bird's breast. Pipe stem is missing.

History Of Use

When Europeans introduced pipes and commercial tobacco to the peoples of the northern coast during the maritime fur trade, in the late 1700s, smoking soon took the place of sucking tobacco as part of ceremonial activities. Prior to such contact, the Haida and Tlingit cultivated a now-extinct, tobacco-like plant which they dried, ground up, mixed with lime from burnt clam or abalone shells, and formed into pellets with spruce gum for chewing or holding in the mouth. With trade tobacco newly available to the Tlingit, “the pipe came into existence, and the smoking feast became an important ceremony after cremation, and at other commemorative ceremonies for the dead”. On this pipe, sheet copper has been carefully wrapped around the edge of the bird’s open mouth and lines the bowl where the tobacco would have been burned. The pipe stem, now missing, would have connected into the bowl through a hole in the bird’s chest.

Iconographic Meaning

Possibility that pipe was carved to emulate a hungry baby bird as a metaphor for the smoker's insatiable craving for tobacco.

Item History

What

Name
Pipe
Identification Number
3260/34
Type of Item
pipe
Material
walnut wood and copper metal
Overall
height 15.0 cm, width 9.0 cm, depth 13.0 cm

Who

Culture
Tlingit
Previous Owner
Elspeth McConnell
Received from
Elspeth McConnell (Donor)

Where

Holding Institution
MOA: University of British Columbia
Made in
Alaska, USA

When

Creation Date
between 1840 and 1860
Ownership Date
before August 12, 2017
Acquisition Date
on August 12, 2017

Other

Condition
good
Accession Number
3260/0034