Fragment pijpenkop 1750 - 1780

Curator: What we're looking at here is a humble, yet intriguing, fragment: a piece of a 18th-century clay pipe bowl, specifically dating from between 1750 and 1780. Editor: It’s strikingly plain; a sort of fossilized drabness. The textured grooves draw the eye in. What material is this, anyway? It has the presence of carved stone. Curator: It's made of earthenware. Though anonymous in its making, such artifacts are so culturally rich and tied to habits, trade routes, colonialism, and class. What do we learn about people’s everyday routines through these objects? Think about the ritual of smoking—who was doing it, and what was its significance at the time? Tobacco in the 1700s and 1800s was often seen as both curative and an enjoyable, stress relieving ritual for some and a way for other to cope with issues arising in oppressive, racist structures. Editor: Yes, but consider the design elements alone—the formal repetition of the dotted lines in the object! Its streamlined form directs the gaze inexorably to that point. You see those ridge lines moving to a central point, and their impact relies on this kind of meticulous attention. A semiotic analysis here allows us to appreciate how shapes influence attention, even if subliminally. Curator: Precisely. Think of the tobacco trade during this time, so integrally connected to power structures. This pipe fragment might speak to an entire transatlantic system. The repetitive use and discard cycle, echoes in the linear grooves that you so poetically framed as the semiotics of drawing the viewers eyes into this tiny thing...it reflects systemic structures and power in its making. The materiality hints back to social history and class status and the wider history that is being revealed, one puff at a time, perhaps in this context it can start a social justice dialogue as well as artistic one. Editor: I still see in this little piece the ghost of classical sculpture. Its cool muted hue combined with the texture that makes it looks like aged marble makes a pleasing minimalist form with powerful design aspects to it. This is perhaps what connects us across time. Curator: Perhaps! Editor: It is interesting to think about all of this. Thank you!