Taft Kiser, Al Luckenbach, and Brian Palmer
Making Pipes: Experiments to Learn Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know

Ceramics in America 2019

Full Article
Contents
  • Figure 1
    Figure 1

    Pipe bowl, recovered from 44VB48, Virginia Beach, Virginia, ca. 1640–1680. Earthenware. H. 1 15/16". (Courtesy, Virginia Department of Historic Resources; unless otherwise noted, all photography by Brian Palmer.)

  • Figure 2
    Figure 2

    Pipe-making waste from the Nomini site (44WM12), Westmoreland County, Virginia, ca. 1650. (Courtesy, Virginia Department of Historic Resources; photo, Lauren McMillan.)

  • Figure 3
    Figure 3

    Often practiced by women, making pipes was an accessible craft which required only clay, a cane, and a fire.

  • Figure 4
    Figure 4

    The process begins with clay as the most critical ingredient.

  • Figure 5
    Figure 5

    Shaping the tube pipe.

  • Figure 6
    Figure 6

    The tube pipe bends into an elbow.

  • Figure 7
    Figure 7

    Excavating the bowl of the pipe.

  • Figure 8
    Figure 8

    Decorating tools are limited only by the imagination.

  • Figure 9
    Figure 9

    Unfired pipes believed to reflect the styles of Algonquian, Iroquoian, and probable Siouan pipe makers.

  • Figure 10
    Figure 10

    The tools and the trimming waste after making thirty-five pipes.

  • Figure 11
    Figure 11

    Ironically, pipes are tubes that can be fired in tubes.

  • Figure 12
    Figure 12

    Augering the stoke hole.

  • Figure 13
    Figure 13

    Pine knots provide the fuel.

  • Figure 14
    Figure 14

    Preparing to ignite the experiment.

  • Figure 15
    Figure 15

    Sealing the kiln.

  • Figure 16
    Figure 16

    Fire in the hole, not the kiln.

  • Figure 17
    Figure 17

    Life is an experiment, full of surprises.

  • Figure 18
    Figure 18

    The dragon is alive.

  • Figure 19
    Figure 19

    Opening the big present on Christmas morning.

  • Figure 20
    Figure 20

    And . . . DISASTER.

  • Figure 21
    Figure 21

    Grisly results—the bone fragments of cremated pipes.

  • Figure 22
    Figure 22

    Revealing the secret of the white inlay.

  • Figure 23
    Figure 23

    The latest harvest.