So the colored woman who couldn’t find a Pamplin pipe to buy received “either 15 or 16” and Miss Thornton received a letter of thanks from her from Atlanta.
Miss Thornton still had approximately 1,450 of the home manufactured pipes for us to see when we visited her in July 1969, and Mrs. Mattox had a few.
Dr. Clyde G. O’Brien of Appomattox has had a lifelong interest in the clay pipes of his area and in the history of their manufacture. He has a collection of pipes as well as two pipe molds, and has given us much information.
We asked Dr. O’Brien for an account of the method of making pipes in the homes. The following is his contribution, in a letter dated March 11, 1971.
“I talked to Jack Price, age 86, he had worked in the plant for years. His mother, Mrs. Betty Price, and grandmother made pipes at home in Pamplin.
“The clay was made up and put into molds, when the pipe was removed from the mold the shaper was used to smooth mold marks, if the pipe was to be identified with ‘Original’, ‘Hayiti’, or some other marking this was impressed on the base with a stamp at this time. The pipe was then sun-dried on a board in summer, or in the stove oven in winter. Then after they had ‘set-up’ the pipes were put into an iron pot, the pots were put into an oven in the back yard and dry chestnut wood was placed around the pots and this was then set on fire. They did not have a thermometer so he did not know the temperature, but when the wood had burned completely the pipes were brought out to cool.
“If a piece of wood fell into the burning pot and started to smoke it was removed at once to keep from blackening or staining the pipes.
“After the pipes cooled they were brought into the house and Mr. Price said that when the pipes were poured out of the pot in which they were baked, to the floor, they would ring or chime when they hit against each other.
“The pipes were then waxed with bee’s wax and mutton tallow and then polished with a woolen cloth, and the children helped.”
In all of this, Bob Davis of Pamplin, age 91, in talking to John W. Walker in 1962, had concurred. He said, “The pipes were molded, trimmed, put on a board and dried in the sun, baked in iron pots, waxed, and rubbed. The pipes were made all through the country, the local stores bought and shipped them, and the Factory would buy these ‘country pipes’.” Here was more direct evidence that the Factory, on occasion at least, bought and shipped pipes made by the Home Industry (Walker, personal communication).