Smoking pipe, wood with silver inlay, Turkey, 1800-1900

Sometime during the late 15th century, tobacco travelled from the Americas into Europe through the means Spanish and Portuguese merchants. From Europe, the plant is believed to have rapidly spread further east into the Indian subcontinent, Iran, and present day Turkey, arriving into Istanbul in 1601.

However, despite the plant’s popularity, it was not initially welcomed, and sparked a series of seriously contentious debates surrounding legality, morality, and sociability. Despite this, a proliferation of smoking devices developed throughout the Ottoman Empire, with the earliest pipes replicating those long-stemmed pipes used in England and the Netherlands throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were originally made of clay, wood, or eventually engraved silver depending on the consumer’s class.

Long, slender wooden pipe with a cylindrical handle and flattened upper portion that curves towards the opening. The entire pipe is inlaid with a pattern of scrollwork. Given to the V&A in 1923 by W. Hunn Esq. [R.P.23/5544].