Antique Chinese Porcelain and Metal Opium Pipe Pot. Cobalt blue and white decorated dragon flying above clouds, with a spout in the top where a long bamboo pipe would be attached. 

Size: 3 x 4 1/2 in. 

In the 17th Century a special pipe was developed in China that vaporized opium instead of burning it, consisting of a long stem, a ceramic pipe-bowl, and a metal fitting, known as the “saddle,” through which the pipe-bowl plugs into the pipe-stem. The pipe-bowl must be detachable from the stem due to the necessity to remove the bowl and scrape its insides clean of opium ash after several pipes have been smoked, and the stems of opium pipes were usually made from bamboo for easy maneuverability. Pipe-bowls were typically a type of ceramic, such as blue and white porcelain, but were sometimes carved from more valuable materials such as jade. Due to opium eradication campaigns in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, antique opium pipes from then are now extremely rare, but the practice was once so common (and spread so far out into the Western world) that the phrase “pipe dream” (meaning something unattainable or a fanciful hope or scheme) arises from it, a metaphorical reference to the never-ending experience of chasing the opium high and always having to come down from it, resulting in either quitting the substance altogether or death from end-stage addiction.

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