The manufacture of pipes commenced soon after the custom of using tobacco had become fashionable and soon after the Virginians commenced its cultivation. Fairholt says:
Old English Pipes.
"The early period at which tobacco pipes were first manufactured, is established by the fact that the incorporation of the craft of tobacco-pipe makers took place on the 5th of October, 1619. Their privileges extending through the cities of London and Westminster, the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales. They have a Master, four Wardens, and about twenty-four Assistants. They were first incorporated by King James in his seventeenth year, confirmed again by King Charles I., and lastly on the twenty-ninth of April in the fifteenth year of King Charles II., in all the privileges of their aforesaid charters.
"The London Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers was incorporated in the reign of Charles II (1663); it had no hall and no livery but was governed by a Master two wardens, and eighteen assistants. The first pipes used in the British Islands were made of silver while 'ordinary ones' were made of a walnut shell and a straw. Afterwards appeared the more common clay pipes in various forms and which are in use at the present time."
During the reign of Anne and George I. the pipes assumed a different form and greater length so long were the stems of some of them that they were called yards of clay. The French pipe is one of the finest manufactured and is made of a fine red clay especially those made by Fiolet of St. Omer, one of the best designers of pipes. Many of these like German pipes are made of porcelain, adorned with portraits and landscapes. Others are made of rare kinds of wood turned in the lathe or artistically carved, and lined with clay to resist the action of fire.
The French also make pipes of agate, amber, crystal, carnelian and ivory, as well as the various kinds of pure or mixed metals. Many of the French and German pipes while they are beautiful in design and made of the most costly materials are often exceedingly grotesque, representing often the most ludicrous scenes and all possible attitudes. Many of them have been termed as satirical pipes taking off some public character a la Nast.
Fairholt says of satirical pipes:
"England has occasioned the production of one satirical pipe for sale among ourselves. The late Duke of Wellington toward the close of his life, took a strong dislike to the use of tobacco in the army, and made some ineffectual attempts to suppress it. Benda, a wholesale pipe importer in the city employed Dumeril, of St. Omer, to commemorate the event, and the result was a pipe head, in which a subaltern, pipe in hand, quietly 'takes a sight' at the great commander who is caricatured after a fashion that must have made the work a real pleasure to a Frenchman."