Clay pipes were certainly a very popular trade item. Traditional styles are not hard to find. In addition to the sources noted above, I know Crazy Crow, Jas. Townsend, and Wandering Bull have them.
As
@Loyalist Dave pointed out, the long-stemmed pipes do not travel well. They didn't travel well back in the day, either. Lots of broken pipes and pieces have been recovered from archaeological sites.
However, I suspect some efforts may have been made to salvage some of the broken pipes on the frontier. The image below may illustrate that point. The picture shows William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (second from the left) and Dr. Walter Butler Cheadle (middle) with their Assiniboine/Metis guide, Louis Battenotte (second from the right), Mrs. Battenotte, and their son (far left). Milton and Cheadle traveled all of the way across Canada, from Quebec to the Pacific coast of British Columbia, in 1862-1863. Dr. Cheadle wrote a book about the adventure, entitled
The North-West Passage by Land. This illustration is from that book:
View attachment 163165
If you look right dead-center in the foreground, you see this:
View attachment 163166
That looks like a common clay pipe bowl with a very short stem, inserted into an elongated secondary stem. This was probably a pretty simple "fix" for a clay pipe with a broken stem. Making a replacement stem of wood could be accomplished without much trouble. I know for a fact you can burn the pith out of a sumac sapling with a hot wire in just a few minutes. For shorter stems, you can just use a gimlet... No heat required. The gimlet will follow the path of least resistance, which would be the pith. One end of the wooden stick could then be reamed out a little larger to admit the clay pipe stem, and you're back in business.
In addition, the broken stems were not necessarily discarded. The jagged ends could be smoothed up, after which they were strung and used as beads. There is an interesting monograph on this topic right here:
Clay Pipe-Stem Beads in North America. This practice likely began in the early 17th century and continued into the 19th, although it was evidently most common in the northeast. I made some stone pipes with wooden stems some years ago, but I don't smoke any more and don't have any clay pipes on hand, broken or not. However, I thought at one time I might try making some pipestem beads, and reasoned that surely a few of the new pipes, imported from overseas, must get broken in shipment. Retailers must find a few broken ones in their shipments, I thought. So, I contacted a couple of sutlers and asked if I could buy some broken pipestems. Nobody responded. I'm sure they thought I was nuts.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
