Following the wooden statues, my dad began carving pipes. There are 18 pipes in the collection.. Sixteen were carved from briar and two were carved in meerschaum. The use of meerschaum pip for es predates briar by about a century. Meerschaum pipes first appeared in 1723; briar in the 1820s.

 

The inspiration that led my dad to pipe carving is as obscure as that which led him to his creation of all the art objects. Neither of my parents smoked cigarettes. None of the pipes, to my knowledge, were ever smoked. With the exception of the elephant, the pipes represent a variety of figures which include presidents, authors, and other historical figures. One of the meerschaum pipes is the Greek God Dionysus. The other meerschaum pipe has not been identified. There is a logic in analyzing the choices my dad made in the selection of the many of the subjects he chose to carve on the pipes.