The First Pipe Show!: Difference between revisions

Now to the catalog that’s been a Web hot topic since the Bonhams’ auction: the 28-page

International Exhibition, London, 1851. Barling’s Celebrated Registered EB WB Briar Pipes. A

caption under the image of the catalog on pipdia.org reads: “B. Barling & Sons catalogue of

pipes—Printed by Unwin Brothers—The Gresham Press—likely dated 1914, Courtesy Jesse

Silver.” (Silver was the first to reprint it, Briar Books Press did a second reprint.) Strange,

indeed, is that this stag-hunt meerschaum pipe is not illustrated on the cover, nor inside the

catalog, nor given honorable mention. What appears on the cover is the following:

Now to my original interest, how many pipe makers exhibited and what did they exhibit.

The challenge was to search every available catalog (the ''Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue''… consisted of five volumes), other editions, and every version published by or for the Exhibition sponsors. Not all were available to me, so it was impossible to find every tobacco pipe manufacturer who participated. More frustrating was the fact that I encountered information inconsistencies between and among the various catalogs; what pipes were exhibited or who were the exhibitors depended on the catalog accessed. For example, in the ''Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851. Part I. Alphabetical Index of Contributors and Whose Names Appear In The Catalogue'', on page 12, there is “Barling & Sons.” Barling is also listed in Part II. Alphabetical and Classified List Of Articles Contained In The Official Catalogue'', under “Meerschaum Pipes,” but under “Tobacco Pipes, Bowls, Tubes, &c.,” Barling is not. The ''Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 Reports by the Juries of the Subjects in the Thirty Classes Into Which The Exhibition Was Divided (1852)'' identifies all the pipe-exhibitor awardees: Barling is not among them.