Pipe
ClassificationsTools and Equipment-smoking equipment-pipes & pipe components
Culture
Canalino
Date1000-1700
Made AtCalifornia, United States, North America
MediumSteatite and clam shell bead
Dimensions1 1/2 × 1 × 12 1/4 in. (3.8 × 2.5 × 31.1 cm)
Credit LineFred Randolph Aldrich Collection
Object number80017
DescriptionThis is a steatite and clam shell bead pipe from the Channel Islands of California from roughly 1000-1700. Catalina’s later pre-contact residents were commonly referred to as Cataliños. The mainstay of the island was its soapstone (or steatite), quarried in several locations centered around the site of the modern-day airport. From this easily worked stone, the island’s material culture was carved. Bowls, pendants, charmstones, and pipes, the subject of this post were all carved from the easily workable rock. This work was essential to the islanders who needed to trade for many of the items which could not be procured on their small island. The result was that the works became part of an extensive trading network which sprawled across the southern Californian coast, often exchanged for pelts or harder stones such as obsidian which found better use as a tool than as a workable medium. All of this is to explain how the Chumash living far to the north of Catalina would have obtained a soapstone pipe. Like this pipe, many Chumash objects were decorated with small clam shell beads. Often these beads lent features to zoomorphic forms. Here we see that it functions as a geometric design.On View
On view
mid 19th - early 20th Century
mid 19th - early 20th Century
1644-1912
1644-1912
19th to 20th Century
late 19th Century
Winnebego
