The smoking of tobacco in Britain became instantly popular when it was introduced in the early 17th century. By 1614, London alone was said to have more than 7,000 tobacco shops. In the 18th century, the use of tobacco became very fashionable amongst the upper and middle classes, whether enjoyed in a clay pipe or taken as snuff.
This brown salt-glazed stoneware jar once sat on a tobacconist’s counter. Strong, practical and fitted with a metal lid, it helped keep loose-leaf tobacco fresh before it was weighed out into paper wraps or small boxes.
Its surface was cold-painted in green and gold and labelled “Bird’s Eye”. Bird’s eye was a fine-cut shag pipe tobacco made from whole leaf, with the stem left in. When sliced, the stem appeared as tiny pale dots, the “bird’s eyes” that gave the blend its name.
The blend was especially popular with fishermen and sailors in the 19th century. Its’ very fine strands packed easily into a pipe and lit quickly, even in rough weather at sea.
The stamp on the base identifies the maker as J Stiff & Sons, one of several 19th-century stoneware potteries in Lambeth. Founder James Stiff, the son of a Suffolk farmer, began as a plasterer’s assistant before moving to London in 1826 to apprentice at the Coade Artificial Stone Manufactory. He later worked for Doulton and Watt’s Pottery as a mould maker and then opened his own pottery in Ferry Street in 1842.
By the 1860s, Stiff’s sons had joined the firm, now renamed James Stiff & Sons. Advertisements show that they made everything from sanitary stoneware and terracotta to electrical components such as insulators, battery jars and porous cells. Tough, weather-resistant and acid-resistant, stoneware was a kind of Victorian industrial plastic.
Even as jars like this were being made, concerns about smoking were growing. The Railway Bill of 1868 required smoke-free train carriages to protect non-smokers. Health warnings on cigarette packets became compulsory in 1991, and from 1 January 2027 it will be illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after 2009.
Objects like this jar may soon represent relics of a vanished trade, reminders of a habit that once filled shops, homes, trains and pubs with smoke.
