CONCLUSIONS
In the beginning of this effort we had assumed that the pipes made by the Factory would be quite different, in both form and decoration, from those made in the homes. We have found that this assumption is not valid.
There is a great deal of overlapping, probably due to the Factory, after its arrival in Pamplin, taking over and producing a number of the shapes and designs that had long been in use in the Home Industry. It is also possible that the Home Industry appropriated some of the Factory pipe forms.
In addition, all local evidence agrees that the Thornton Store did not purchase pipes from the Factory; they were getting plenty themselves, taken in trade for their merchandise, and which they would have to dispose of on the wholesale market in competition with the Factory.
There is local evidence that the Factory did, at times, buy locally made pipes in order to fill large orders, as well as when their machinery was not in operation. It is quite unlikely however, after buying and paying for them, that these pipes would be found in the landfill on the Factory grounds, the fill from which the “factory” pipes considered in this study came.
Of the total of 39 pipe forms located by us, 10 were from Home Industry, 19 from the Factory, (eight appeared in both), and two were either surface finds or the knowledge of their exact place of manufacture lost, as they had long been in the hands of their local Pamplin area owners.
The Akron Company had made pipes before they established the pipe plant at Pamplin, and the names of some of their pipes in the Pamplin literature would infer that at least one form, the “Akron Hamburg”, had been carried from Akron to Pamplin, which then is described as “from Virginia clay, attractive red color”.
On the other hand, Mrs. Betty Price has been quoted as saying that the pipe form known as “Hamburg” was one of the first made by the women of the area.
For a time in later years, at least by 1941, the Pamplin Factory made a pipe similar in form and decoration to their “Akron Hamburg”, but of fire clay, and called it “Akron Shaker”.
Since there is so much overlapping of form and decoration between the pipes made in the homes and those made by the Company, one wonders if there might not have been even more overlapping had the sample available to us at this late date been greater than the 4,451 pipes examined.
It is our conclusion that when the Akron Company came to Pamplin they started to produce pipes of a number of forms that had long been made by the Home Industry of the Pamplin area. They may also have brought one or more Akron pipe forms and decorations with them, to be manufactured at Pamplin. In turn the Pamplin Home Industry possibly adopted some forms now being produced by the Company. (Some of these forms may also have been in production in other areas, but probably of different clay).
The foremost factor distinguishing Pamplin area pipes, from either manufacturing source, was the “Virginia clay, of attractive red color”.
So far as we have been able to determine, no particular friction ever developed between the Factory and the industry being carried on at the homes; each had its own wholesale outlets.
To the best of our knowledge, the Home Industry started about 1740 and definitely closed in 1953.
The Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Company was established about 1878, and it definitely closed in 1951.
In our work we have handled literally hundreds of the pipes, [Plate 13] A, called “Powhatan Original” in the Company’s literature and advertising. These had been excavated both from the factory grounds and from the basement of the old Thornton Store, and we found nothing about these two lots of pipes that would seem to distinguish the two manufacturing sources. Of the total, only one single pipe failed to carry the word “Original” impressed in the base.
This “Original” was an early Home Industry form, and there is strong evidence that when the Company came to Pamplin they adopted this form, and added “Powhatan” in their advertising, just as they must have adopted some other local pipe forms. “Original” was also impressed, but probably at a still later date, on the base of three other pipe forms; they were forms “B”, “M”, and “AC”.
We also believe that the Company made the best estimate as to the starting date of the home pipemaking industry, (they would have had about a hundred year advantage in arriving at such a date, as compared to the problem under present circumstances), and applied that date to Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Company as having been “established 1739”. In other words, they pictured themselves as being a continuation of the industry that was already there.
If the date of 1878, or one near that time, for the establishment of the Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Co. is correct, then this is later than the terminal date of some of the western forts and trading posts at which Pamplin pipes have been reported. It would therefore seem evident that the Pamplin pipes found in some western locations were the result of Home Industry, made before the pipe plant ever got to Pamplin. This is authenticated by the fact that they were being carried by the Bertrand.
It would seem desirable, instead of considering these pipes as Pamplin Company products, to simply think of them as Pamplin Area Pipes.