This is presented as an aid in the identification of clay pipes from the
general area of Pamplin, Virginia, that might appear in archaeological
and historic sites. Interest in these pipes has been stimulated by their
being reported as found in various sites in the western United States.
The circumstances under which this information has been gathered and the
fact that it has been a number of years since clay pipes were made here,
either as a home industry or commercially by the Pamplin Smoking Pipe
and Manufacturing Company, leave much to be desired. On the other hand,
in our work we have inspected a total of 4,451 Pamplin pipes; of this
number 39% were from the factory grounds, and 61% were from the Thornton
Store Site and represented the home industry, so we feel that the 39
forms presented represent at least a majority of the pipe forms made at
Pamplin.
This is not to say that a similar form could not have been made
elsewhere; however the style, the generally heavier and thicker
character of the piece, and the finish, or lack of it, as well as the
usual deep red color of the Virginia clay, would seem to make these
pipes distinctive.
Under the conditions in which these pipes were retrieved it is obvious
that the numbers of the different forms located give little indication
of the relative numbers of the different styles that were manufactured,
the popularity of the various styles, or the relative time of their
manufacture.
Nearly all of the pipes examined were retrieved by excavation, by people
who simply happened to become interested; this is equally true whether
the pipes had been made by the factory and excavated out of fill on the
old factory grounds, or whether they were made at the homes and
excavated from the basement of the old Thornton Store, which through the
years had taken them in trade for merchandise.
In some cases among the pipes examined there were not more than one, or
a few, examples of a certain form. In other cases there were hundreds.
Among the examples available to us there was generally little variation
in size within the same form. We have illustrated the largest and the
smallest, since this also gives an opportunity to note minor variations
that may exist between different molds for the same pipe form. However,
a rather wide variation in size was present in that shown as (Plate 13
A), the “Original” Powhatan, where a total of 12 gradations from largest
to smallest were found.
The predominant color of the pipes is dark red. A lighter color is
infrequently present, running from almost yellow, to salmon, to light
brown. The very dark, almost black coloration of some is said to come
either from minerals present in the soil of this area, to which the
pipes presented here had been subjected since nearly all had been many
years underground, or from actual fire that had fallen into the saggers
of the Company kiln, or the iron pots in which the pipes had been fired
in the home industry.
During the last years of factory operation “some white clay from either
West Virginia or Kentucky was shipped in by railroad”. This resulted in
pipes of a lighter color, at times light grey to white. Apparently no
pipes made from this particular clay were seen by us, except possibly
those illustrated in Plate 23 AJ.