If it's for display, why take up space on a dresser or table or shelf? Why not hang it at the ideal height? However, the large ring suggests to me that it was intended to be hung up frequently and not left on the wall like a display rack.
Taverns used to keep long stem (16") clay pipes for the use of their patrons. After each use, an inch or so would be broken off the stem so that it would have a clean bit for the next user. I can easily see a situation where a tavern owner would hang the rack on the wall to keep it out of harms way. When a customer would request a pipe, the barkeep could take the rack off the wall and set it on the bar so the customer could select one.
Paul K. Dickman
I think this is a good possibility. Here's a much simpler version: "
to those in colonial Williamsburg. Pipes from the simple molds of Shakespeare's time were still produced late in the 20th Century.
They said the part about taking long-stemmed pipes from racks on tavern walls and breaking the ends off was a story. It helped sell racks, but I don't believe the story.
Clay lets you taste tobacco better than other pipes, but brier became more popular late in the 19th Century due to three drawbacks of clay pipes: they're brittle, the bowl gets too hot to hold, and the passage is narrow.
English companies produces lots of clay pipes about 6" long because they could be carried in a pocket and were very cheap. The smoker had to take care not to burn his fingers and his tongue.
Long-stemmed pipes were more fragile and more expensive, but the smoke was cooler and they could be held comfortably by the stem. It's unlikely that a tavern keeper would lend expensive long-stemmed pipes to customers. It's even more unlikely that a customer would ruin a long-stemmed pipe by breaking it. Wiping would probably have been considered adequate. Clay pipes buried in coals would come out pure and white.
A clay pipe would not have been hung stem down because the narrow passage in the stem would soon have gummed up. A tavern keeper would not have presented a customer with a portable display of fragile pipes. Until Victorian times, they were like Model Ts. A customer had only to choose whether he wanted a long one or a short one.
Actually they only used one pot. The rest are just decoration. If I remember correctly the pot was partially filled with water with the wax floating on top so they wouldn't need so much. There was no real training one person would just show another how they'd been shown to do it. It was just done for the tourists. I was taught blacksmithing there by the farrier. I made shingles there but didn't find out how to do it right till many years later. Karl
Hot water! I remember making blocks of wax from honeycomb that way.
That could explain why some candles are shaped like carrots. Water holds a lot of heat. If the end of the candle extended into the water, it could get especially warm. It wouldn't accumulate much wax.
I think I'd prefer using a small kettle on a little table. I wouldn't have to do any walking because I could reach all ten candles from my chair.
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It appears to me that a sitting person would need long arms to turn the stand, lift a rack of candles, and dip them in a big kettle.
I remember them doing a lot of sitting but maybe that was in between tourists.
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