Lot 312

17th C. Spanish Colonial Caribbean Terracotta Pipe Bowl

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Lot 312
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17th C. Spanish Colonial Caribbean Terracotta Pipe Bowl
17th C. Spanish Colonial Caribbean Terracotta Pipe Bowl
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17th C. Spanish Colonial Caribbean Terracotta Pipe Bowl

Estimate: $400 - $600

Starting Bid: $200

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT (In Progress)
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Spanish Colonial, Caribbean, ca. 1600–1800 CE. A modest yet evocative survivor of the colonial Caribbean, this hand-formed terracotta pipe bowl preserves the angled elbow profile favored by smokers across the Atlantic world. The earthenware body, fired to a warm ochre-orange, retains traces of sooting around the rim of the bowl, a quiet record of the tobacco that once smoldered inside. Mineral encrustation and earthen patina cling to the lower flank, attesting to long burial.

Clay pipes of this form proliferated in the Spanish Caribbean from the seventeenth century onward, when tobacco, an indigenous American cultigen first encountered by Europeans in the Antilles, had become a global commodity. Local potters, drawing on both Iberian craft traditions and surviving indigenous techniques, produced pipes for daily use among colonists, sailors, enslaved laborers, and free Afro-Caribbean populations alike. The elbow form, with its short stub bowl and integral socket for a reed or cane stem, is characteristic of regional production and stands apart from the slender white kaolin pipes manufactured in northern Europe.

Small, tactile, and unpretentious, the pipe bowl carries the residue of an everyday ritual that crossed class, race, and nation in the early modern Atlantic. Size: 3.1" W x 2.8" H x 1.3" D (7.9 cm W x 7.1 cm H x 3.3 cm D).

Provenance: ex-private collection, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, USA, collected from 2010 to 2015

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Item # 198622

  • Condition: Very Good. Chips to rims and elbow as well as nicks, pitting, and abrasions commensurate with age. Otherwise, intact and very nice.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000