Pijpenkabinet & Smokiana

About

The Amsterdam Pipe Museum (formerly Dutch: Pijpenkabinet, "pipe cabinet") is a museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, dedicated to smoking pipes, tobacco, and related paraphernalia. It holds the national reference collection (nl) in these areas. The permanent exhibition of the Amsterdam Pipe Museum displays over 2,000 items representing the variety of smoking pipes and utensils that have been used in all parts of the world over the past 25 centuries.

The Amsterdam Pipe Museum (Pijpenkabinet) was founded as a private collection in 1969. From 1975 to 1982 the collection was on display in an art gallery at Frederiksplein, Amsterdam. The focus was mainly on clay tobacco pipes for which Holland has been famous.

In 1982 the Pijpenkabinet moved to Leiden, where it functioned as a public museum until 1995. The collection was enlarged with historic and ethnographic items. The museum actively published its scientific historic research.

In 1995 the Pijpenkabinet moved to its present location in Amsterdam. It can be found in a typical Amsterdam canal house along the Prinsengracht, between the Leidseplein and the National Museum (the Rijksmuseum). The museum now shows all sorts of pipes, including works-of-art like the carved meerschaum pipes and hand-painted porcelain pipe bowls.

When the Niemeyer tobacco museum in Groningen shut down in 2011, the Amsterdam Pipe Museum acquired some four hundred items from its collection before the rest was auctioned off, stating that its acquisition preserved the "core" of the former museum's collection.

The collection of the Amsterdam Pipe Museum has been growing since the day of its establishment due to a policy of regular acquisitions. It now counts more than 25,000 items, which are systematically arranged and stored in the museum's storage room. It includes artifacts of the cultural history of smoking from nearly all continents. A representative selection is displayed in tailor-made cabinets.

The collection itself is the worldwide archive for pipes and serves as source of information for multiple scientific papers and publications. In 1993 it was awarded with the A-status within National Collections by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the Netherlands. [ citation needed ]

The Amsterdam Pipe Museum’s collection has the following categories:

- pre-Columbian era : pipes dating back to the prehistoric times of smoking over 2500 years ago

- archaeological : mostly clay pipes discovered during archaeological excavations in the Netherlands as well as in other parts of Europe

- clay pipes : historical smoking pipes from the 19th and 20th centuries, including complete surveys of several manufacturers

- porcelain pipes : artistically modeled and skillfully painted pipe bowls in European porcelain

- meerschaum pipes : tobacco pipes and cigar holders with characteristic shapes and highly artistic carving

- wooden pipes : early specimen from various types of wood as well as a survey of the popular briar pipe

- other smoking pipes : smoking implements made of ivory, bone, stone, glass, metal, hard rubber etc.

- ethnographic : indigenous pipes from Africa, Asia and America, including water pipes

- opium pipes : original Chinese examples and counterparts from other countries, including opium paraphernalia

- pipe makers tools : the technical aspect of the craft, including a large set of moulds for making clay pipes

- tobacco curiosities : objects related to pipe smoking, such as tobacco boxes, pipe stands, etc.

- prints and drawings : illustrations of smokers from all periods