an advertisement for Fribourg & Treyer, tobacconists, whose premises at 34 Haymarket,
into which the firm moved in 1781, has survived
(from a programme for the musical comedy Oh, Julie, Shaftesbury Theatre, London, summer 1920)

Pipe and cigarette smoking may court controversy nowadays but not so the collecting of smoking paraphernalia of the past. The range of items to collect seems limitless: printed ephemera abounds, of course, as our first illustration demonstrates, but so too do all sorts of objects in gold and silver, or those so mounted, intended for the use and pleasure of smokers. Indeed, Fribourg & Treyer were not alone among tobacconists to enter their own marks at the London Assay Office, in their case between 1908 and 1914. Besides cigarettes their stock almost certainly included cigarette and cigar cases and boxes, mounted cigar cutters and pipes as well as more exotic items like spirit lighter/burners and ashtrays.

During its long existence between 1721 and 1982, Fribourg & Treyer saw fashions in smoking and smokers’ equipment come and go. Particularly attractive to collectors are late 17th/early 18th Century silver tobacco boxes, some of which are engraved with their owner’s arms or perhaps an inscription recording their gift from one friend to another. A good example, Thomas Ash, London, 1705, is currently available at Alastair Dickenson Ltd.

Rarer are silver pipes, one of which – a long ‘churchwarden’s‘ – has appeared and is due to be sold at Matthew Barton Ltd. According to the journalist G.A. Sala writing in 1859, pipes of this type were then already out of fashion, even in ruder materials than silver. ‘But where, sir,’ he asked, ‘is the old original alderman pipe, the churchwarden’s pipe, the unadulterated ”yard of clay?”’

the crested bowl of a George III silver ‘churchwarden’s’ pipe, Joseph Taylor, Birmingham, 1809;
the slender stem comprises four screw-in sections and the overall length is 49.7cm