Many of these pipes appeared, both from the factory site and among those made by local women and retrieved from the basement of the Thornton General Store. Mrs. Betty Price said that this form was a standard product of the local Home Industry pipe makers before the factory ever came to Pamplin and one of the earliest made in the area. All of the pipes available to us carried the designation “Original” except one.
The making of clay pipes was an old and well established business at Pamplin; whether the impressing of the word ORIGINAL on the base of this pipe was an innovation of the Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Company, or whether this had been long done by the Home Industry is unknown.
_Plate 13 B._ Slightly Acute Angle. Home. 2 examples. Dark red. Plain round bowl, octagonal base. Quite similar to “A” except both bowl and base are shorter, and diameter of bowl proportionally larger. “ORIGINAL” is impressed on right side of base. A very sturdy pipe.
_Plate 13 C._ Slightly Acute Angle. Home. 11 examples. Glossy dark red. Round bowl, octagonal base. Upper part of bowl plain, lower front portion decorated with a series of raised dots. The dotted area is divided into two triangles, as well as separated from the undecorated area by raised and rounded bands. The mold marks in the undecorated area have been almost entirely smoothed. It would seem that all pipes of this form came from the same mold, in contrast to the fact that at least most other Pamplin pipe forms seem to have come from a number of different molds.
The two pipe forms “C” and “B” are quite similar, except that “C” has decoration as well as a slightly longer base, and is not marked “Original” Both are sturdily built, with thicker than average bowl walls, and both were retrieved from the Thornton Store site; no examples were found at the factory site. They are probably the product of the same individual woman working at her home.
_Plate 14 D._ Slightly Acute Angle. Home. 4 examples. This is a black pipe. The deep, solid color was probably intentionally achieved by allowing portions of the burning wood of the kiln to fall into the iron kettles which were used as saggers for the firing of pipes in the Home Industry. The bowl and base are round, with diagonal cross-hatched decoration on bowl, separated from the same decoration on remainder of base by a narrow rounded band. Flat band at both top of bowl and end of base. The right and left halves of the pipe are separated from each other, front and back, by a broad smooth ridge covering the mold mark.