British Pipemaking (Great Britain)

Britain is one of the select countries that shaped pipemaking in both its clay and its briar phases. The clay pipe workshops founded after tobacco reached the island supplied the European market for centuries, and the briar workshops that gathered around London in the second half of the 19th century gave rise to a distinct approach to shape and craftsmanship known as the "English pipe."

The Clay Pipe Centuries

The product of the first phase was the clay pipe. Shaped in a mold and fired, these cheap pipes remained, until the spread of cheap cigarettes at the end of the 19th century, almost the sole smoking implement in Europe. Production was organized early on: in 1619 the pipemakers of Westminster were formed into a body by royal charter, and within a few decades this structure was folded into London's livery-company system. Outside London, the town of Broseley in Shropshire became the best-known provincial center, with production reportedly beginning at the end of the 16th century; the practice of date-stamping pipes by makers there in the last quarter of the 17th century remains one of the anchors of archaeological dating today. The town's last clay pipe factory ceased production at the end of the 1950s, and the building reopened as a museum in 1996.