Traditional Eastern and Midwestern
Indian Tobacco Pipes
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MBR offers fully functional Ritual Pipes
Each is modeled after known American Indian types
I take custom orders
Traditional Eastern/Midwestern Tobacco-Pipes and Pipe Cases
I have last year begun to make traditional eastern and midwestern tobacco pipes from fired clay. Having never worked with clay before, I find it an excellent medium from which to produce these and other products. I rely heavily upon archaeological publications, photos and drawings to achieve detailed accuracy.
Hopewell-style Vulture and Raven Pipes
These fully functioning tobacco pipes are each modeled after existing ancient Hopewell platform pipes. Ancient pipes like these were once used for ceremony, ritual and prayer. The range of animal-effigies found on such pipes is remarkable, as are the carved details--so much so that many of the numerous species depicted can be identified with certainty. Each pipe is functional and made from fired multi-hued clay blends.
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Rawhide 4-Directions Pipe Case
This Sacred Pipe Bundle is unique and represents the four elements/directions via each corner-flap
displaying suitable cut-outs to imply the nature of Earth and Sky, Wind and Water.
A delicately carved replica of the famous Hopewell Eagle Claw effigy adorns the pipe bundle-lid. The enigmatic and brightly reflective eagle-claw cut-out is made from a sheet of mica and is an exacting replica of the original cut-out, in miniature (the original is nearly a foot long!)
A white arrowhead forms the toggle to close this case.Beautiful and well-made, this pipe bundle will bring you many words of appreciation!
The pipe itself is a traditional Cloud-Blower type so common across the continent. Arrows representing the 7 directions adorn this beautiful and fully functional pipe. This Cloud-Blower is one awesom pipe--don't miss the chance to have a realistically styled replica of an ancient pipe-form used by tribes across the continent for over 2000 years.(To use this pipe, a small stone is placed at the bottom of the bowl to prevent ash from coming through.
Tobacco, enough to fill the whole bowl, is then packed over the stone, ignited and its smoke drawn through the tube, and then exhaled to the heavens above in prayer)
Tobacco was highly valued by Trappers, Traders and the Indians, and smoking tobacco was both a courtesy offered friends around the fire, and a means of making prayers more powerful. Ones' word meant something if spoken while smoking the pipe, and many Indian rituals required tobacco as a sacrement.
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Proto-Cherokee Head-pipe, Short Tube Cloud-Blower, Powhatan, and Eastern Severed-head Pipe*
*conjectural, from general textual descriptions cited by McGuire, Joseph D.,
in "Pipes and Smoking Customs of the American Aborigines";
Annual Report, U.S. National Museum, 1897
The Severed Head Pipe took two weeks to shape, carve and finish, and does not include the dissolution and mixing of two colors of clay to create this carved stone-like appearance--it is one of my all-time favorites and a sure conversation starter.
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Bear Effigy , Incised (offered with the Pipe Bundle above) and Plain Straight Tube Cloud Blower Pipes, respectively.
These pipes are made following tradition and innovation within tradition, and represent forms, styles and personal totems found across the continental United States. These cloud-blower pipes are of both the earliest and most persistently used styles of pipes across the more than 2000 years smoking materials have been burned by the American Indian in prayer, ceremony and ritual.
Attractive and fully functional, these cloud-blowers offer enough room for tobacco to be liberally used to accommodate the passage of the sacred pipe among several friends.
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Eastern Alate (winged) and Elbow Pipes
These fine pipes represent types found east of the Mississippi, with the winged forms spanning a great region across the southern and eastern US.
The unique style found in these 'winged' pipes, sometimes refered to as trowel-pipes, is pleasing to the eye and makes for a strong pipe. Examples have been found among the Powhatans', and many other regional tribes' aboriginal village sites and sacred grounds. These attractive and fully functional pipes deserve to be honored in the manner of our forefathers of the great Indian Nations.
The first pipe is approx 9 inches long, and each will hold enough tobacco to be passed 'round a group.
Larger Pipe Case
Fashioned from rawhide and sewn to keep the shape of an elongated rectangular box, this pipe is compartmented inside with a single folded piece of rawhide to give serarate spaces for pipe-stem, bowl and accessories--functional and elegant in it's simplicity.
I can make simple or ornate storage boxes and cases for just about anything you require to be stored or packed for travel.
Rawhide is tough, long-lasting and strong. It can be treated with vegetal oils to waterproof it, and it may be painted, inked or overlayed with most any suitable fabric-material, if a rigid form and softer exterior were desired.
Prices vary according to size and complexity--many things can be done with rawhide...
This case is not currently offered, but is shown to serve as an example of what might be created for you! More examples are shown below...
