Antique Ceramic Hill Tribe Pipe, Burma/Myanmar (3474A-WKE) $85

Description

Smoking tobacco in Burma/Myanmar and Thailand has been an integral part of Southeast Asian cultures for centuries and are usually found underground by hill-tribe farmers when ploughing their fields in Northern Thailand and Burma. They usually have small chips on the bowl, body and stem and are otherwise very good condition. The bowl often has decorative articulated pointed spurs on the sides and the stem is usually decorated with molded adornments that include double-meander designs, thick lines in relief, and rounded raised ridges. Its black carbon color is a result of having been fired in a high carbon reduction atmosphere with a lack of oxygen. A bamboo or metal stem was often inserted at the end through which smoke was drawn. In her book Burmese Crafts Past and Present, Sylvia Frasier-Lu shows a similar pipe she says was made in multiple provincial pottery villages (p. 205) in Myanmar/Burma and dated to the Pagan Period that ended in 1297 which is a prototype for this more modern version.  This fired clay tobacco pipe made in the 19th-century is very similar to one in Frasier-Lu’s book in size, decoration, and overall composition and it is suggested the one in her book was made in Mandalay, Burma. These pipes are unique gifts for collector of smoking paraphernalia and are part of the VA Collections of Ceramics-and-Pottery.

Sources

Fraser-Lu, S. Burmese Crafts: Past and Present. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1994.