Selmec (Schemnitz) Pipes

Selmec pipes is the collective name for the glazed clay pipes produced in Selmecbánya, the famous mining town in the north of the Kingdom of Hungary. The town appears as Schemnitz in German sources and as Banská Štiavnica in present-day Slovakia; the pipes likewise appear under all three names depending on the language used.

Selmec has no kinship with the English school, the first thing that usually comes to mind with European clay pipe making; the family tree of the shapes here stretches not west but east.

A Shape Drawn From the Ottoman Chibouk

Bringing goods to northern Hungary from the west was not easy; because English and Dutch pipes were rarely seen in the region, local makers had no examples to work from either. The model came from the east instead: the chibouk bowl that entered Europe by way of the Ottomans. The type worked by pipe makers in Buda is especially determinative. In that type the bowl is close to cylindrical and relatively tall, closing at the bottom with a hemispherical body, while the neck is short and ringed; the angle at which the neck joins the bowl is around sixty degrees. For the Istanbul branch of the same craft, see the entry on Tophane pipe-making.

Once Selmec's makers had taken over this basic form, they placed their own signatures on the base of the bowl. The base is worked far more densely than the main body; the fan-like shell-and-leaf ornament that opens across it is considered the defining motif of this school. The motif did not stay in Selmec — it also seeped into the work of Austrian, German, and French workshops. The bowls themselves are often faceted into polygonal surfaces and bear the maker's stamp.