- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Black ceramic pipe bowl for opium pipe. Attached to pipe stem [1887.17.2.3]. The bowl is stamped with three Chinese seal-chops, and three yinyang motifs.
- Long description
- Black ceramic pipe bowl for opium pipe. Attached to bamboo pipe stem [1887.17.2.3]. The bowl is of unglazed pottery and has a copper ferrule at the base. Along the bowl's sides are carved three identical yinyang symbols each outlined with a repeating geometric pattern. On one side of the bowl are three impressed Chinese seal-chops, reading (from left to right): 記⽃ (yi ji dou); 佘記 (she ji); ⾦元 (jin yuan). The pipe bowl is part of a set of opium smoking apparatus [1887.17.2.1-.15].
- Person
- Field collector Unknown Collector
- Other owner George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood
- Other owner Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- PRM source George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood
- PRM source Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- PRM source Oxford University Museum of Natural History
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1882 Archaeological period: Qing Dynasty
- Date collected
- By 1882
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 05/1887 Transferred: 05/1887
- Materials and processes
- Material Pottery, Process Incised, Material Copper Metal, Process Inscribed, Process Stamped
- Dimensions
- Diameter 50 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1887.17.2.4 Erroneous Accession Number: 1986.6.1 Other numbers: 160
- Research and responses
In January 2024 Chuimei Ho, co-author of ‘Chinese Opium in America 1850-1920’, viewed photographs of the pottery pipe bowl and provided the following comments:
Dark clay, 3 stamps. “Jinyuan” 金元 “She ji 佘記.” “Hai ji”(??). The stamps are sandwiched by 2 yinyang images which are bordered by pointed leaves impressions. Made by a potter in Yixing, a well-known kiln centre in Jiangsu Province. This potter appears in quite a few Yixing style of pipe bowls, often with colour enamel painting on red clay. It is a hot collectors’ item but none has shown up in North American archaeological sites.
This object, along with pipe stem 1887.17.2.3, was previously numbered 1986.6.1. [JMC 28/08/2025]
This pipe bowl is part of a set of opium smoking apparatus [1887.17.2.1-.15] which was transferred from the Museum of Economic Botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1887. The set is listed in the Kew Register of Specimens Distributed as having been transferred to H.N. Moseley at the Pitt Rivers Museum in May 1887, and the Pitt Rivers Museum Donations I Book contains an itemised listing, entered as a donation from the Director of the Royal Gardens Kew in May 1887. The Kew Specimen entry book gives the source of the collection – Sir George Birdwood – as well as the extra detail that he donated the ‘opium smoking apparatus from Singapore and opium pipe and lamp from Shanghai’ on 21st October 1882. An added note reveals that this collection was ‘withdrawn & distributed’ in May 1887.
When the pipe and lamp were found on display in 1986, and the rest of the items subsequently found in a nearby drawer in 2003, the associated labels and markings gave the source as Birdwood. Since the PRM accession book entry did not mention Birdwood, and the objects found did not match up exactly with the itemisation, this was thought to be a separate set of opium smoking apparatus from Singapore and was accessioned with the found unentered number 1986.6.1-.11. By making the connection with Birdwood and finding the Kew number ‘160’ on the object labels, it has been possible to definitively match the objects to the set transferred from Kew in 1887. [JMC 28/08/2025]
This object is part of a set of opium smoking apparatus [1887.17.2.1-.15]. The full set comprises two trays [.1] and [.2 – not found], a bamboo pipe stem [.3] with ceramic bowl [.4], spare bowl [.5 - not found], stand for spare bowls [.6], lamp [.7], bowl-cleaner [.8], stem cleaner [.9 – not found], forceps [.10], pin for roasting opium [.11], two horn containers of prepared opium [.12 & .13], and two needles [.14 & .15 – additional to the accession book listing]. [JMC 28/08/2025]
The opium pipe and bowl (1887.17.2.3-.4) were researched by MSc student Rui En Pok (Rae) for the module ‘Provenance Research and the Ethnographic Archive’ in Spring 2025. Updated descriptions of these two objects and transcriptions and translations of the text on the saddle and pipe bowl have been provided by her.
A more detailed description of the markings on the bowl are as follows:
'1. The Chinese seal-chops on the pipe bowl. From left to right, they are: ⼀記⽃ (yi ji dou), 佘記 (she ji), ⾦元 (jin yuan). ⼀記⽃ and⾦元 possibly refer to either the name of the artisan who crafted the bowl, and/or the year of production. 佘 (she) is a Chinese surname and 記 (ji) denotes the name of a business, so the middle seal, ‘House of She’, is likely the name of the kiln that produced this bowl. Identical markings are found on other pipe bowls in the British Museum’s collections, which also possess a fourth seal, 宜興 (yi xing). Yixing is a city in Jiangsu Province, China well-known for producing handmade unglazed stoneware (especially the Yixing teapot) made of Yixing clay (or 紫砂 zi sha) mined from the surrounding region. This helps confirm that the pipe bowl was produced in Yixing, and likely was made from Yixing clay as well.
2. Three yinyang symbols. Yinyang has been popularly understood in the West to encapsulate the stable harmony of complementary forces, but it is also about transformation. Dynamic interactions between different entities generate inevitable and unpredictable change, and the sum of these relations constitute the universe. See Wang (‘Understanding of Yin Yang’ 2013) for more information.'
For a copy of the provenance report which is relevant to all items in the set please see the related documents file. [JMC 28/08/2025]
Search terms: Narcotic, Pottery, Vessel, Opium Accessory, Pipe, Inscription