The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7179 p911-936
22-29 December 2001

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Christmas miscellany summary

Is the man depicted on early English drug jars really smoking a pipe?

By W. A. Jackson, MSc, MRPharmS

The first jars which were made in England for apothecaries and which were labelled with the name of their contents were made from tin-glazed earthenware. In this type of pottery, tin oxide was added to the usual glaze made from lead oxide, sand and potash in order to make it white and opaque. Sometimes a little cobalt oxide was included to counteract a tendency towards yellowness. Usually, the bisque (unglazed) jar was fired at a low temperature, then dipped in the glaze and allowed to drain and dry. On the resulting rather powdery white surface, designs which sometimes included the name of the drug could be painted. Usually slip used to paint these contained cobalt oxide, producing a blue design on the jar's white body when the second (high temperature) firing took place to vitrify the glaze. The decorator needed a steady hand and a sure eye as all the painting was done freehand on to curved surfaces, and once applied it could not be removed. Tin-glazed earthenware is robust and durable but tends to craze and to flake with the passage of time. It is known to have been used from about 1000BC in the middle east, in Spain in the 11th century, and to have reached France, Germany and Holland in the early 16th century. It is also known as maiolica, faience or delftware. The last name became popular because it was produced in great quantities in Delft, Holland.

In or around the year 1567 Jasper Andries and Jacob Janson left Antwerp to establish a pottery producing tin-glazed "Gally Paving Tiles, and Vessels for Apothecaries and others" in Norwich. In 1570 they moved to London, probably to the parish of Aldgate, and, until about 1625, they produced ornamental dishes, mugs, and untitled drug jars, including albarellos, which were decorated with horizontal lines or bands of dashes, chevrons or intertwining curves. These are difficult to distinguish from similar jars which were being produced in the Netherlands at this time. Other potteries were soon established along the banks of the Thames in Lambeth, Southwark and Vauxhall, which produced tin-glazed earthenware until about 1780.

The first of these jars which carried the name of the drug they contained appeared during the Commonwealth period about the middle of the 17th century, and examples exist which are dated 1652, 1662 and 1665. Below the middle of the straight cartouche, typically edged with scrolls, there is usually a satyr's head, and at each end, a larger grotesque head in profile, with something protruding from the mouth. In his book 'Early English drug jars', published in 1931, G. E. Howard observed, "this grotesque is an old man's head in profile with something in his mouth like a pipe", and in 1955 Agnes Lothian's opening sentence in an article entitled "The pipe-smoking man" was, "Almost a quarter of a century has elapsed since Mr Geoffrey E. Howard first described an early series of English Delft drug jars which have, at either end of the cartouche, a grotesque head of a man smoking a pipe." Based upon this slender evidence, from that date this design has been known as "the pipe-smoking man". It is true that a number of the objects projecting from the mouths of the grotesques do resemble the clay tobacco pipes of the 16th and 17th centuries, which have small bowls with a forward inclination, but it could be argued that they represent protruding tongues, or possibly, as I will demonstrate, foliage.

The pipe-smoking man

The late Dr John Wilkinson, whose collection of drug jars is now housed in the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, supported the pipe-smoking man theory, pointing out that tobacco had originally been introduced into Europe towards the end of the 16th century as a medicinal herb, and that in 1665–66 the boys at some schools were required to smoke a pipe a day as a prophylactic against disease.

In 'The pipe book', Alfred Dunhill quotes a French visitor in the second half of the 17th century as saying that smoking was a common habit in both men and women in England. They thought smoking tobacco was essential because it dissipated the evil humours of the brain. The mothers of schoolchildren used to send them to school with a pipe of tobacco in their satchels, and they smoked this instead of having breakfast. When it was time for a break books were laid aside, and both master and pupils would fill their pipes, with the master teaching the pupils how to hold their pipes and draw in the tobacco smoke, in the belief that it was absolutely necessary for the sake of their health.

Confirmation that apothecaries stocked both tobacco and pipes is provided by the inventory of the shop of Thomas Baskerville, an apothecary who was active in Exeter from 1560 and who died in 1595. The stock included two shillings worth of "Course" (sic) tobacco and twelvepennyworth of "Tabacco" (sic) pipes. In the shop inventory of Thomas Needham of Chesterfield (1665) we find "Virginy (sic) tobacco lb.30/Best tobacco 27lb/Spanish tobacco lb.5", as well "A Tobacco knife & press". It is interesting to note that, apart from some "Morters and pestills" (£4.10.0), the best tobacco (£3.10.0) and the "Virginy" tobacco (£3.3.0) were the most valuable items in the 14-page inventory. In fact the three lots of tobacco were worth £8.13.0 out of a total value of £180.8.9 for the shop's contents.

Tobacco had many medicinal uses. Smoking was said to stop catarrh, relieve weariness, suppress the "Fits of the Mother" and strengthen the stomach. It was a gentle laxative, and acted as a preservative in time of plague. If the green leaves were applied to the skin they would cure leprosy and the itch, kill lice, heal wounds, cleanse ulcers and take the fire out of scalds and burns. A gargle made from it cured toothache and tumour of the uvula. Alternatively toothache could be treated by using tobacco to stop a hollow tooth. An infusion of the green leaves in old Malaga would make a liniment for the palsy and an excellent salve for cuts, bruises, burns, gunshot wounds and the bites of venomous creatures could be prepared from the juice of green English tobacco, olive oil, turpentine, wax and verdigris. Finally, rectal injections of tobacco smoke eased colic and "Pains of the Belly" and cured "Fits of the Mother and Faintings". Tobacco was a remarkable and versatile drug!

However, against the "pipe-smoking man" theory is the fact that I know of no other early English drug jars in which the design is related to a specific drug, particularly since the drug had no connection with the contents of the jar, nor does it account for the elf-like appearance of the terminal heads.

Gapers

Another possibility is that the design was introduced by an immigrant potter who had memories of the "Gapers", large carved wooden heads, many with a protruding tongue (often with a pill on it), which were to be found outside the shops of Dutch apothecaries from the 16th century onwards. (There was a Gaper Bridge and Gaper Street in Rotterdam in 1584.) Their origin is uncertain, but it is thought that their purpose was to enable an illiterate public to recognise the type of shop where they were displayed as that of an apothecary. Some of them still survive outside drug stores but their number is rapidly decreasing. This decline in numbers started in the middle of the 19th century when a tax on each outdoor piece displayed by a shop was initiated. This resulted in many being discarded, and others taken inside the premises. Nowadays there are comparatively few. A booklet published in 1980 listed approximately 120 addresses where they still existed, and several museums which contained them.

Personally, I find the "gaper" theory no more likely than the "pipe-smoking man".

The green man

To me the elf-like appearance of the terminal heads and the appearance of the head under the middle of the cartouche, the hair and beard of which usually resemble foliage rather than hair, suggests that they might represent the "Green Man". This character, also known as "Jack-in-the-Green", "Green George", "King of the May", "Robin Goodfellow" and "Robin Hood", is a pagan deity who is still remembered in some May Day ceremonies, such as the procession which takes place in Knutsford, Cheshire and includes a man, known as Jack-in-the-Green.

In Castleton, Derbyshire on 29 May (Oak Apple Day) a procession led by the "Garland King" tours the village. He is a man mounted on a cart-horse, and the garland (a wooden frame, completely covered with flowers and greenery which weighs about 60 pounds) is worn over his head and shoulders, completely hiding him except for his legs. On top of the garland is placed a posy of especially fine flowers, and this is known as the "Queen". He is followed by another rider, originally known as the "Woman", but nowadays also called the "Queen". Until 1956 this role was taken by a man dressed as a woman riding side-saddle. The procession finishes with the "King" riding into the churchyard. The garland is hoisted to the top of the church tower and fixed to one of its pinnacles, and the posy from its apex is placed by the "King" at the foot of the war memorial. Originally the garland was left at the top of the tower for the following year or until it disintegrated, but nowadays it is lowered after a few days and stored until the next Garland Day.

Although this ceremony is said to commemorate the restoration of Charles II in 1660, its origins are thought to be very much older and probably indicate the adoption of a pagan custom by the Christian church.

The image of the Green Man often in the form of a male head, made from or surrounded by leaves is to be found in many churches, both in England and on the Continent. Often he is represented with vegetation emerging from his mouth, as in the examples to be seen at Llangwm (Monmouthshire), Sampford Courtenay (Devon) and outside the Church of Saint Mary and Saint David in Kilpeck (Herefordshire), and I suggest that it could be foliage such as this rather than a pipe which we see illustrated in the pipe-smoking man jars.

It may be thought strange that pagan images should be found in Christian churches, but most early churches were built on pagan sites, and the "old religion" exerted a powerful influence on many people, particularly in rural areas, for hundreds of years after the advent of Christianity in England. In fact the church at Kilpeck has a much more surprising carving, that of the Sheel-na-Gig, a female figure overtly displaying her genitalia, who is thought by some people to represent the "Great Earth Mother". Like the Green Man, the Sheel-na-Gig can be seen in (or out-side) a number of old churches.

Conclusion

It now seems unlikely that we will ever find documentary evidence which will throw any light on the origin of this design, and I suspect that, despite my pleas, these Commonwealth relics will continue to be known as the "pipe-smoking man" drug jars.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society possesses a magnificent collection of English jars, based on those originally belonging to Howard, many of which it purchased after his death. It includes a fine pipe-smoking man with touches of yellow and red enlivening the main design of blue. It is rare to find English jars of any design with polychrome decoration, so this is a particularly desirable specimen.

These jars are robust, and one would expect more of them to have survived, but we must remember that few provincial apothecaries would have been likely to own such expensive items, and it is thought that many of those in London would have been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Surviving examples are eagerly sought by collectors, but so few remain that they are rarely offered for sale, and fetch high prices at auction.