- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Pipe bowl of carved wood. The pipe associated with this object is [1930.86.41 .1] [MOBB [OPS move] 24/10/2016]
- Long description
- Tobacco pipe made in several parts, fitted together. The larger part [.1] consists of a long pipe stem, carved from a single piece of wood, stained an orangey brown colour (Pantone 723C), with the mouth end cut at an angle and showing probable signs of wear and burning. This has been hollowed out and expands slightly at the lower end, where it has been slotted into the neck of a gourd body, and fastened by a series of 9 pegs, fitted through holes bored around the gourd edge. This creates a tight join, which has been sealed with a black resin. The body of the stem has been decorated with 6 narrow strips of a flexible white metal, probably tin, with gilding on the surface (Pantone 871C). Each strip has been wound around the body at regular intervals, with the ends of the strips secured by being turned inwards and hammered into the wood. The body has been made from a narrow gourd with reddish orange surface (Pantone 7517C). This has a short bevelled edge at the top, with the row of peg fixtures immediately below, and a short neck that flares out to an ovoid body which tapers in again towards the base. The base has been plugged with a convex wooden disc, with a thick band of black resin over the join, and at the centre of the base. Two circular holes have been cut into the upper face of the body. One is small and blackened, suggesting it has been burnt into the surface. The other is larger and shows no burning. A separate pipe bowl has been fitted into this larger hole [.2]. This has been made in 2 pieces. The upper piece has been handmade from a pale brown well levigated clay (Pantone 726C), fired with pinkish patches across the surface (Pantone 7515C). This has a slightly oval mouth and narrow bevelled rim edge, sloping down to concave sides. This has been decorated around the bevelled rim with a series of impressed patterns, probably applied using a roulette, and consisting of horizontal hatching framed by a deeper impressed oblique line that probably represents the edge of the tool; semicircular bands of similar hatching extend down the sides in a series of festoons. The base of this part is obscured, as it has been tightly fitted into a second piece that looks to have been newly carved and little used. This is made of a fresh, yellow coloured wood (Pantone 7508C), and has a flat-topped rim then a spool-shaped upper body with a broad projecting collar carved around the centre; semicircular facets have been cut in rows at the top and bottom edges of this for decorative effect. The rest of the body then continues as a narrow cylinder below, with a double bevel-cut end. The whole has been hollowed out, and there is burning in the upper end of the bowl, but not in the more recently added lower part. The object appears to be complete; there is a small crack near the edge of the larger hole in the body, hairline cracks in the top part of the pipe bowl, and a few insect bore holes in the wooden stem. The interior of the gourd smells of tobacco. It has a total weight of 156.5 grams. [.1] has a total length of 654 mm; the pipe stem has a diameter at the top of 16.5 mm, an aperture of 11 by 9 mm, and a base diameter of 41.3 by 40.8 mm, while the tin binding strips are 5 mm wide. The gourd body is around 98.5 mm wide, with openings that measure 7 mm and 21 mm in diameter. [.2] is 138.5 mm long, with a bowl diameter of 36.7 by 35.7 mm and mouth of 25 mm, a maximum diameter of 40.5 mm, and a diameter around the cylindrical peg base of 16.4 mm [RTS 8/7/2005].
- Geographical reference
- Western Bahr el Ghazal Northern Bahr el Ghazal Warab Lakes Western Equatoria
- Cultural groups
- Zande
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1930
- Date collected
- 1927 - 1930
- Acquisition information
- Purchased: 31/12/1930
- Materials and processes
- Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Hollowed, Process Handbuilt, Process Fire-Hardened, Process Burnt
- Dimensions
- Diameter: max 44 mm, Length: max 138 mm, Weight 156.5 g
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1930.86.41.2
- Research and responses
At the time this object was collected, the Bahr el Ghazal province was much larger than it is today, extending from roughly the Bahr el Arab all the way to the border with the Belgian Congo; this area is now divided into the districts of Western Bahr el Ghazal, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and parts of Warab, El Buheyrat and Western Equatoria.
Petherick said of the Zande and their tobacco: 'They were great smokers of tobacco, of their own growth, mixed with the rind of the banana, also indigenous to the country’ (Petherick 1861, Egypt, The Sudan and Central Africa, p. 466).
Larken also discusses Zande pipes: "Tobacco pipes vary from the big kind three feet in length ... to the more portable one a third of this size. The bowls are well made of pottery... the stem is of hollowed wood, the joint between it and the bowl being sometimes lapped with leather. The mouthpiece is the stone of the akua palm fruit (Ar. dom) from which the kernel has been removed and replaced by a mass of fibre obtained by scraping the stalk of a plant. Sometimes tobacco is lacking ... and this packing of fibre is used instead, all soaked as it is in nicotine and saliva... [the Zande word for tobacco] is gbakara or bagbuduma". He then goes on to talk about smoking baingi, or hemp, which seems to have been made illegal by the authorities in his day. This was smoked using: "a gourd, often ornamented with brass nails or by having rough figures and geometrical designs scratched on it, has a small cut in it less than half an inch in diameter; in this hole is inserted a plug of baked clay pierced, the little orifice being widened at the top to take a pinch of dried baingi leaves. Smoke is drawn through the small end of the gourd into the mouth" (P.M. Larken, 1926, "An Account of the Zande", Sudan Notes and Records IX no. 1, pp 92, 94). This style of gourd sounds similar to the museum's example, except that the latter has been fitted with a long stem.
For a related type of object, using a gourd body with separate wooden pipe bowl, see 1936.10.74, which Evans-Pritchard collected from the Anuak.
RDF 1930.86 contains a letter from Evans-Pritchard to Mr. Malcolm dated 12 December 1930, offering him some 81 Zande and Nuer objects. As Malcolm was curator of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, it seems unlikely that these objects were ever sent to the Pitt Rivers Museum and this letter is only useful as background for Evans-Pritchard's attitudes to the intended future use of his material, and as evidence for the temporary storage of these objects in Professor Seligman's office in the London School of Economics at the time. The file also contains an undated list of 48 objects, which does not seem to match accessioned material and could be the list of rejected items that Balfour mentions in another letter on file, dated 31 December 1930 [RTS 19/8/2005].
Search terms: Narcotic, Pipe, Tobacco Accessory