A Siberian Pipe Made of Mammoth Ivory: From the Dunhill Museum to Auction

A pipe carved from mammoth ivory is one of the rare antique pieces whose provenance can be documented from beginning to end. Over roughly a hundred years it traveled a path from the private collection of Alfred Dunhill, founder of Dunhill, through a night of wartime bombing, into a long gap, then into an American collection, and from there to a British auction house.

Despite the break in between, the reason it could be identified is simple: the piece had been pictured on the spine of the dust jacket and inside the pages of the 1924 edition of The Pipe Book.

The Piece Itself

The sale record describes the pipe as an Eastern Siberian, Samoyed-made piece. "Samoyed" is a now-abandoned exonym used during the Russian Empire for peoples speaking the northern Samoyedic languages; the Nenets are the largest group within it. The pipe is 31.5 centimeters long and has a bowl that widens toward the mouth, a long octagonal-section shank, a detachable mouthpiece, and a leather carrying strap.

Its material is unusual given where it was made. Studies of ivory carving in Yakutia indicate that mammoth ivory was not extracted and traded commercially until the end of the eighteenth century, and did not become a widely used material even afterward; it was used occasionally for items such as sewing needles, arrowheads, and pipe bowls, and its use was often accompanied by a ceremony asking the animal's forgiveness.