Arta viciului. Colecția de pipe a Muzeului de Istorie Sighișoara
The Art of Vice. The Smoking Pipe Collection of the Sighișoara History Museum

The Art of Vice. The Smoking Pipe Collection of the Sighișoara History Museum

Summary/Abstract: The habit of smoking tobacco, brought about by the great geographic discoveries in America, has become so popular in modern European civilization that it has been added to the category of human vices. Beyond that, chatter sprang up or business was done while smoking pipe and so the pipe has become a mandatory accessory for the elite and beyond. Tobacco was among the first plants brought from America. It appeared on the old continent around 1559 and was spreading massively and extremely fast in Europe - tobacco smoking becoming one of the more or less disputed taboos of Europeans. As it is known, tobacco smoking is achieved by means of a pipe or cigar, or cigarettes. In the case of smoking pipes, we deal with a white clay pipe, called Dutch, a red clay pipe, called Turkish pipe, a porcelain pipe, a pumice stone pipe, on the body of which are engraved true works of art. To these, we can add the wooden ones. They have been made of cherry, elm, maple, birch since the end of the eighteenth century. As for Sighişoara, we do not know when smoking was introduced, what we know is that the first use of the cigarette was made by Captain Friedrich Wultschner in the middle of the nineteenth century. Until then, the hookah and the smoking pipes were an attribute of Sighisoara's elite. The smoking pipe collection of the Sighisoara History Museum comprises a total of 13 pieces. These - some of them true works of art - belonged to the elite, but also ordinary people.

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