In January we did a blog about various bits and pieces that had been found on the Town Yetholm haugh - HERE.
One of the items discussed then was an old pipe bowl. It’s easy to find bits from old clay pipes scattered all around Yetholm – mainly bits of pipe stem, with an occasional bowl fragment. Chris Burton and his daughter, rummaging around in the gravel along the Bowmont Water, have recently found the example shown above. For once this is rather more interesting than the usual plain fragment, being decorated with a heart shape. Similar decorated pipe bowls to be found on the internet make a variety of claims about the symbolism. Sometimes the heart is coupled with an image of hand with a smaller heart held in its palm. Some claim this as a patriotic Irish emblem - the hand-holding-a-heart being the Red Hand of Ulster. Others claim it is a masonic icon, linked to the Oddfellows. The source for such ideas are unclear. Unfortunately the internet generates and duplicates a lot of unchecked guesswork. On the other hand ... the internet also threw up the photograph shown below - from Wikimedia Commons - HERE. The notes that go with it read: English: A white pipe clay tobacco pipe, dating to the mid nineteenth century. The pipe is complete and does not appear to have been used. The stem is stamped with the words 'TENNANT & SON' and 'BERWICK'. The bowl is stamped with the initials 'TW' within an oval depression. There is a raised heart motif on one side of the bowl. The heart motif is decorated with cross hatching. The pipe has a small circular section spur. The bowl has a diameter of 23mm and a height of 42mm. The stem has a maximum diameter of 10mm. The pipe as a whole is 133mm in length. Whatever the symbolism of the heart it seems highly likely, given the location of the find, that Chris's pipe was also made by Tennant and Son of Berwick and would have looked exactly the same when complete. As with the example found on Wikimedia, the pipe bowl found on the haugh was only decorated on one side, displaying a heart and no hand. Who knows what it was meant to symbolise - perhaps simply that the owner loved to smoke and dream?
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