A Pipe Parable in Chapter and Verse: Difference between revisions

A word or two about Mammoth ivory pipes is in order. “Mammoth ivory was not extracted, traded, or used for crafts until the end of the eighteenth century. …Mammoth ivory was rarely used, though sometimes was employed in making sewing needles, arrowheads, and smoking pipe heads, often following a ritual asking for the animal’s forgiveness” (Zinaida I. Ivanova-Unarova and Liubov R. Alekseeva, “Ivory Carving in Yakutia,” berghahnjournals.com). “The Pipes of All Peoples” (Birmingham Daily Post, December 16, 1870) describes an exhibition of William Bragge’s expansive pipe collection in that city. I quote in part: “From the north to the south of the two Americas, similar examples [of pipes] are shown; from the pipes made of mammoth tusk, among the Samoyeds [indigenous people of Russia], where only driftwood is found, and where bone only will stand fire, and from the whalebone pipes from Sitka and Greenland, down to the medicine-pipes of Paraguay, and the tinder-boxes made of the tooth of a tiger and the tail of an armadillo, every variety of American pipe is shown.” “Indeed, there are several specimens from Asiatic Russia, the work of the Samoyedes and Esquimaux, which may truly be said to confound those learned persons who think that the remains of pre-historic European art could not have been produced by semi-savage races. The materials used by these northern people are sometimes granite, but usually mammoth ivory and whalebone” (Harry V. Barnett, “The Pipes of All Peoples,” The Magazine of Art, Vol. VI, 1883). (Note the deliberate absence of the word “tobacco” or “smoking” to modify “pipe” in these descriptions, and neither word is associated with any Mammoth ivory pipe cited later in this narrative.)   

I needed to investigate further. How did these six pipes end up in the United States? Who brought them and when? In Our Family Business (1979), Mary Dunhill mentions that the Dunhill store (and many others in the surrounding area) was destroyed during the Luftwaffe blitz bombing of London in mid-1941. According to Tommy Zman Zarzecki, “Churchill Cigars” (famous-smoke.com): “After the Nazi blitz on London in 1941, enemy bombs all but blew the famed Dunhill cigar shop to pieces.” Alex R. Iapichino, “The History of the Dunhill Cuban Cigars” (cigarsense.com) tells it slightly differently: “War wreaked havoc in Central London, and on 17th April 1941 at around 3.00 am in the morning, the Alfred Dunhill shop was hit by two parachuted land mines destroying much of the premises in Duke Street.”

I contacted Peter Tilley, the curator/archivist of the Dunhill Pipe Museum, who indicated that during the raid, everything that was not destroyed was boxed up and temporarily placed on the sidewalk. Furthermore, he added, company records indicate that a few passersby had pilfered some of Alfred Sr.’s antique pipes, but there is no list of how many or which pipes had been taken. Of course, he couldn’t explain how or why these particular pipes ended up in the United States. I offered to return them and he replied “Finders-keepers, Ben.” So, I kept them … for a while.

==Chapter Four. The Trade==