Who Made Sherlock's Clay Pipe?

by Bruce Harris

About the Author: Bruce Harris is the author of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: About Type. His article, "MacGuffins on Baker Street" appears in the October 2016 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

Excerpt

There are questions and there are burning questions. “I always smoke ‘ship’s’ myself,” states Dr. John H. Watson in the first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet. Good to know, but hardly a question, yet researchers pursued. To what did Watson refer when he said, ‘ship’s’? Tobacco? A pipe? Not to mention his usage of the Delphic three apostrophes in a five-letter word?

Two phrases, the ubiquitous “Elementary, My Dear Watson,” and the rara avis, “I Always Smoke Pollack’s myself,” never crossed Sherlock Holmes’s lips. But, the latter could (and should) have been the detective’s response to his chronicler’s ‘ship’s’ confession during their first historic meeting.

Sherlock Holmes reached for his clay pipe more than any other type of pipe, yet little effort has been made to identify the maker of the “old and oily clay pipe.” Holmes’s clay is mentioned in six cases. While attempts have been made to identify Holmes’s briar wood pipes, the same attention has not been afforded the “old black (clay) pipe.” Outside the Sherlockian world, a plethora of information and research are available for clay pipes versus all other pipe types. Perhaps too much information exists causing researchers to shy away? With the ever-present renewed interest in Sherlock Holmes, the brand of the detective’s clay is a burning question not being addressed by literature-loving devotees worldwide.

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