page_title: Eduard Bird
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Eduard Bird / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Tobacco became fashionable in England in the 1570s. Clay tobacco pipes were the easiest way to smoke it. They were inexpensive and popular but easily broken. Shredded tobacco would have been placed in the bowl of the pipe and lit, and the smoke inhaled through the mouthpiece. When tobacco was first introduced it was expensive so this meant that pipe bowls were quite small. Tobacco became more available and cheaper as more and more tobacco plantations were established in the United States. Smokers could soon afford extra tobacco and so the bowls of the pipes became progressively larger. (Pictured here with other clay pipes ranging from 1580-1790). maker: Unknown maker Place made: London, Greater London, England, United Kingdom Wellcome Images Keywords: Smoking; tobacco pipe
context_page_description: Eduard Bird was an English tobacco pipe maker who spent most of his life in Amsterdam.
  His life has been reconstructed by analysis of public registers, probate records, and notary and police records, by historians such as Don Duco and Margriet De Roever from the 1970s onwards.
  Pipes with the "EB" stamp have been found around the world.
context_section_description: An 11-page inventory described the property Evert II had inherited, including the two main houses, furniture, tableware, paintings, the pipe workshop and a huge stock of tobacco pipes.
  This included more than 376,000 pipes in total.
  The inventory includes 1 1/2 hogsheads of sugar shipped in exchange for 12 cases of pipes unloaded at Malta.
  Bird had received a shipment of tobacco from Reijnier Rijcke of New Netherland, who is listed among his debtors.
  Evert II continued in the business, but with less success.
  He sold the Egelantiersgracht house in 1678, and the Rozengracht houses in 1683.
  He died some time before 26 November 1692.
  Bird's grandson, Evert Bird III, became a wine merchant.
  Archaeologists have found pipes made by Edward Bird around the world.
  The pipes have a distinctive maker's mark on the heel, consisting of the raised letters "EB" surrounded by a circle of triangles.
  Bird's clay pipes have been found in excavations in Galway, Ireland.
  Large numbers of his "EB" pipes have been found in sites in Manhattan from the Dutch period, which indicates that he was supplying at least one of the major pipe exporters.
  Thus the Nan A. Rothschild Research Center has a fragment of a white ball clay smoking bowl and attached stem with the EB mark on its heel, found during the excavation for 7 Hanover Square in lower Manhattan.
  The stem has a bore diameter of 6/64 inches.
  Bird's pipes are often found in New Netherland, which later became New York, and  also in places further to the south, but are rarely found in Canada and New England.
  They are the most common type of pipe bearing a  maker's mark unearthed in Fort Orange (New Netherland).
  The "EB" mark is on 31% of the bowls recovered at that site.
  There are also pipes from other Amsterdam pipe makers associated with Bird such as John Plumber, Benjamin Chapman, Roger Wilkin, Matthew Stafford, Thomas Michiels, Jan Claesz, and Hendrick Gerdes. These men seem to have cooperated rather than competed with Bird.
  "EB" pipes have been recovered from shipwrecks such as the Dutch East ship Kennemerland (1664) and the Santo Christo de Castello (1667).
  The Kennemerland was en route to Batavia (modern Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies.
  The Santo Christo de Castello was en route to Genoa.
  The pipes have been found in a mid-17th century home in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
  Several pipes with the "EB" mark were found in excavations of Port Royal, Jamaica, which was destroyed in 1692. The pipes have also been found in native American sites in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania and throughout Iroquoisia, particularly in sites from the third quarter of the 17th century.
  In 1911 Frank Wachter excavated 15 artifacts from an Indian burial site on the outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey.
  They are now held by  Harvard University's Peabody Museum.
  They include an "EB" white ball clay tobacco pipe with a stem bore diameter of 7/16 of an inch.
caption: 16th century clay tobacco pipes. They were inexpensive and popular but easily broken. As tobacco became less expensive the bowls were made larger.
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