Russian Academy of Sciences
Peter the Great’s Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkammer)

January - April, 1994

Smoking - Sides of Tradition

    The exhibition presented the Siberian collection of smoking pipes and accessories remarkable for their variety as well as materials on smoking tradition among the peoples of the Central and East Asia. This approach showed the geography of the tobacco-smoking pervasion to Siberia from China, Japan via the Sakhalin island, the Amur river and the South Siberia.
    The tradition of smoking is shown as a complex, polysemathic, sometimes contradictory ethno-cultural phenomenon. Smoking is a system of ethic and esthetic standards, subjective customs, behavioral realia, visions, principles and religious believes. To approach smoking as a pure vice would be too narrow and one-sided, though such standpoint is as ancient as smoking itself.
    The exhibition suggests to get free from stereotypes of smoking apprehension, to reveal the origin of habits, to overlook this everyday process from the historical heights and within the context of the world culture.
    Obviously, the exhibition had not presented the tradition of smoking in its historical entirety, nevertheless the exhibition emphasizes ethnographic perspective of this phenomenon which had been organically intertextured into common context of material and spiritual culture of mankind.
    The tradition of smoking is a universal ancient phenomenon of human culture with ancient roots and had not been limited only by tobacco smoking. Prayings to gods and appealing to the diseased ancestors were often accompanied by incense. Different smoking mixtures of dry herbs, bark, mushrooms and leaves have been known as psychedelics since ancient times. Such materials were in magic apothecary of Chinese Taos, wizards, Siberian shamans and were used along with mantras, cult dances, and ritual music. Medical effect of smoking materials has been also well-known, for example, Chinese absinth cigars or "smoke baths" of Siberian healers.
    In many traditional Asian societies, smoking was associated with specific rules of behavior and ethic norms, for example, exchange of smoking pipes or joint smoking were considered as a sign of special inclination and sympathy, unity, mandatory etiquette procedure, peculiar tribute to courtesy.
    The exhibition shows smoking accessories of the peoples of China, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea, and muslim countries of Near East which allow to have an outward glance at special life esthetics of an eastern smoker, regulated by other rules an laws - deliberateness, tendency to harmony, meditative concentration.
    Among many nations, in particular, the Siberian ones , smoking accessories - pipes, tobacco boxes, tobacco pouches, steels, were common in everyday life and became an essential element of traditional cloths. The smoking accessories were often buried along with the dead, or carefully handed down from generation to generation. The Siberian smokers had separate pipes for specific purposes: crafts, fishery, rest and festivals. There were separate pipes for men and women. Elegant pipes, tobacco boxes or pouches were subjects to special pride and exquisitism.
    The exhibition acknowledges with various sides of the smoking phenomenon in traditions of different peoples, states vast point of view on this problem.