A pipe for smoking, circular bowl, yellowish green soapstone, Yarkand

A pipe for smoking, fashioned in one piece from yellowish green soapstone. It consists of a medium-length, round tube with a gently tapered mouthpiece at one end and at the other end there is a small rectangular block with a pitched end that has diagonal channels carved across both end faces. On one side of the block and perpendicular to the tube's length, a circular bowl has been fashioned that attaches via a short stem. A small hole has been drilled through the base of the bowl and down the stem to connect with the hole in the tube. The surfaces have been smoothed to a silky, matt finish and the tube and bowl have been sparingly decorated with carved circumferential channels and grooves.

This pipe was formerly in The India Museum in London and it was then transferred to the South Kensington Museum (later renamed The Victoria & Albert Museum) in 1879.

Although in China a wide variety of translucent to opaque, green stones are generically referred to as "jade", there are only two minerals - nephrite and jadeite - that are officially accepted as such. This pipe has been fashioned in a yellowish green soapstone (steatite) which is a much softer material than either of the jades and it would have made the fashioning process much easier. Also, metal tools could be used rather than harder abrasives and the residual tool marks clearly show that the pipe was at least finished on a lathe, probably bow-driven.

1909(IS)