Pipe (1800s–1900s): Art, History and Details
Pipe at the Cleveland Museum of Art: 1800s–1900s, Wood, copper, glass beads, sinew, leather, and thread. Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
Pipe (1800s–1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
Mothers often used long-stemmed pipes like this because they helped direct smoke away from the babies they carried on their backs. Carved by men, pipes were used by both men and women. A female maker added beaded fringe using a color scheme typical of Xhosa beadwork. The miniature apron suspended from the fringe suggests a woman’s garment, and thus ownership of this pipe. Social and leisure practices, smoking and snuffing tobacco were also associated with the ancestors and with ideas of fertility and procreation. Inherited between individuals and families, pipes have connected clans and generations and thus linked the worldly present with the ancestral past.
Object facts
- Title: Pipe
- Date: 1800s–1900s
- Culture: Africa, Southern Africa, South Africa, Xhosa-style maker(s)
- Type: Tools and Equipment
- Technique: Wood, copper, glass beads, sinew, leather, and thread
- Dimensions: Overall: 20.3 cm (8 in.)
- Collection: African Art
- Department: African Art
- Accession number: 2010.199
A detail from the museum
The basic form of pipes like this one derives from examples made from clay, which the Dutch introduced at the end of the 1500s.
Collection credit
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Further reading listed by the museum
- Pemberton, John, and Smith College Museum of Art. African Beaded Art: Power and Adornment. Northampton, MA, Smith College Museum of Art, 2008
View the collection record
See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.
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