Clay pipes were ubiquitous in the earlier centuries ... sailors smoked from these pipes hundreds of years ago as even still smoking helps take away boredom on the sea.

Keens sought to carry on this tradition and began providing clay "churchwarden" pipes for their guests to smoke. Eventually, prominent patrons began to sign their pipes. Even as pipes began to ...

The pipe's clay may well have been carried by barge on ... I like the irony of a man who had presumably chosen the anti-slavery motif smoking tobacco grown by slaves in Virginia.