Antique Earthenware Hill Tribe Pipe, Burma (3474A)

Description

For centuries Burmese and Northern Thai Hill Tribe farmers and provincial residents have used clay earthen pipes for smoking tobacco and opium. The tradition was an essential part of the daily life and social norms of various regional ethnic groups, including the Karen, Hmong, Shan, Lawa and Akhu. It was so key among the Akhu that pipe smoking was a part of courtship. In which young men would craft bamboo pipes to give them to young women  to court them.  Pipes like this are sometimes found buried in the dirt by farmers when preparing their fields for planting.

Pipes were fabricated following techniques passed down for generations to create smoking pieces of similar sizes, decoration, and overall composition with traditional adornments. their  blackish color resulted from being fired in a high carbon reduction atmosphere with little oxygen.

Although a single piece, this 19th-century pipe was designed as if it were made in two distinct parts: a stem into which a bamboo or metal rod was inserted to draw smoke. and a rounded bowl that sits on a flat-footed base. Overall, the design is fairly complex and intricate. The long stem is covered with a molded decorative double-meander design while the bowl is covered with deeply articulated spurs on the sides double-meander designs, thick lines in relief, and rounded raised ridges above an indented body with smaller articulated spurs. Sylvia Frasier-Lu in her  Burmese Crafts Past and Present illustrates a similar pipe (p. 205) was made in multiple Burmese provincial pottery villages dated to the Pagan Period which ended in 1297.

As one might expect from a buried earthenware piece of this age, there are small chips on the bowl lip and body and a loss on the end of the pipe’s stem. Otherwise, it is in very good condition.

These pipes are unique gifts for collector of smoking paraphernalia although for decorative and historical purposes only and not for use.

Sources

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