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.