This pipe with its slender stems originates from South Africa’s Xhosa peoples. Typically, the pipe bowl features geometric interlocking patterns composed of inlayed lead, a trademark technique among the Xhosa. The European design of the pipe shape hence features a local innovation, a beautiful mix of cultures in an utilitarian object. To create the delicate inlay motifs, a shallow pattern was carved into the surface of the wooden pipe bowl, molten lead was poured into the grooves, and the excess was scraped away with a blade and rubbed with a cotton cloth. A tiny base beneath the wooden bowl would have once allowed the pipe to be left sitting upright. Women’s pipes such as the present have longer stems than men’s, as well as taller, narrower bowls with a smaller capacity. Pipes were used in a variety of social contexts in southern Africa, and while sometimes tobacco was smoked as part of a simple interpersonal exchange, other moments were more ritualised. Ancestral sprits could be honoured and satisfied by offerings of tobacco as well as entities inhabiting the surrounding natural world. The habit of pipe smoking was so important in Xhosa culture, that when someone is deceased one uses the expression that he or she has laid down his pipe.