Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1887 — Where German Pipes Are Made. [ARTICLE]

Where German Pipes Are Made.

Bulila, a mountain village of Thuringia, is the center of the pipe mannfac- ' ture of Germany. Like our own Sheffield, it was famous in the middle ages for its arms and armour, and at a subsequent period for its knives. When the use of tobacco became common in Europe it turned its attention to the fabrication of iron smoking-pipes. Gradually, however, beginning in the seventeenth century, meerschaum and wood were adopted as more suitable materials to work upon. The first. meerschaum pipe was carved in the efirtypart of the tliiity years’ war, and Wallenstein is said to have bought it. The true clay is only to be procured at Eski-Scher, in Asia Minor, where there are large deposits, and whence it is sent direct to the manufactories in Bulila, of which there are at present forty, employing almost the whole population of the district., The number of pipes and other articles dear to smokers turned out is enormous, the yearly average being 540,000 real meerschaums, varying in price from 3 pence to £l2 apiece; 500,000 imitation meerschaums at from 1 shilling to £1 the dozen; 9,600,000 porcelain pipe howls, either plain white or. gayly painted, rising in price from 4 ponce to 10 shillings the dozen; s,ooo,od9Lwooden pipes, of infinite variety in size, form,', ornamentation, and price, the common kinds being extremely cheap, and those -artistically; carved fetching a comparatively high price; 3,000,000 Bowls of clay or lava, plain, jat about 3 pence, of better kinds at 3 shillings the dozen; 15,000,000 pipes composed of separate parts (bowl, stick, cover, etc.), from 5 pence to £25 the dozen. There are five qualities of meerschaum used in the making of .pipes.; the best is known by -its facile absorption of the nicotine j nice of tobacco, which gradually develops into a rich brown blush upon the surface, and when this process is well advanced the pipe becomes almost invulnerable without, being hard. A specimen of this kind sold at Vienna for £SO, although it was not very highly carved. —London Times.