Pipe Canes (Gadget Sticks)

Pipe canes are walking sticks whose body or handle has been hollowed out to hold a pipe bowl, mouthpiece, tobacco, snuff, or matches. In English-language sources, this type of multi-function stick is grouped under the heading gadget stick or system cane: objects that look like an ordinary cane from the outside but reveal a second function once disassembled and opened. This accessory was most widespread in 19th-century Europe; its production continued into the early 20th century.

The Cane's Transformation Into an Accessory

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the cane in Europe stopped being merely a support tool and became a complement to a gentleman's attire. Louis XIV is known to have owned a cane with an eagle-shaped pommel set with twenty-four diamonds; Voltaire is said to have owned eighty canes, Rousseau forty. Count Brühl of Saxony is said to have owned three hundred canes, each paired with a matching snuffbox. The gold-pommeled cane given to Benjamin Franklin by a French lady admirer is also among the well-known examples of this tradition; Franklin bequeathed this cane to George Washington in his will. This turn of the cane into such a personal object coincides with the period in which designs using the shaft as a place of concealment became widespread.