Cleveland Museum of Art

Pipe

Date

1800s–1900s

Medium

Wood, copper, glass beads, sinew, leather, and thread

Culture

Africa, Southern Africa, South Africa, Xhosa-style maker(s)

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Mothers often used long-stemmed pipes like this because they helped direct smoke away from the babies they carried on their backs. Carved by men, pipes were used by both men and women. A female maker added beaded fringe using a color scheme typical of Xhosa beadwork. The miniature apron suspended from the fringe suggests a woman’s garment, and thus ownership of this pipe. Social and leisure practices, smoking and snuffing tobacco were also associated with the ancestors and with ideas of fertility and procreation. Inherited between individuals and families, pipes have connected clans and generations and thus linked the worldly present with the ancestral past. The basic form of pipes like this one derives from examples made from clay, which the Dutch introduced at the end of the 1500s.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.