![[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14299_0085_001(einstein_albert051309).jpg?w=1)
![[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14299_0085_002(einstein_albert051309).jpg?w=1)
![[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14299_0085_003(einstein_albert051309).jpg?w=1)
![[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14299_0085_000(einstein_albert051309).jpg?w=1)
Details
[EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955)].
A billiard briar pipe [?c.1945]
Stem length: 139mm; bowl height: 49mm; bowl diameter: 31 mm.
Provenance: The pipe has passed by direct descent from Albert Einstein to the present owner.
Einstein was rarely without his pipe: even after being advised by his doctor to give up smoking, he continued to carry one on his person – if only to place it, empty, in his mouth, where he would chew upon it. The present pipe bears the marks of this use in meditative moments, the mouthpiece being obviously chewed. At least two other pipes with Einstein provenance are known, held in institutional collections: one is at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where it is the single most requested item in the Modern Physics collection, and another at the Historical Society of Princeton. Both were given by Einstein to friends, around 1947 and 1953 respectively. The present pipe bears an intriguing resemblance to that shown in pictures from 1945 of Einstein with the Soviet spy Margarita Konenkova, with whom he conducted an affair: indeed, in one of a series of affectionate letters to Konenkova, written on 27 November 1945, Einstein wrote: ‘everything here reminds me of you: 'Almar's' [their shared term of endearment, a combination of their names] shawl, the dictionaries, the wonderful pipe that we thought was gone, and really all the many little things in my hermit's cell’.
A billiard briar pipe [?c.1945]
Stem length: 139mm; bowl height: 49mm; bowl diameter: 31 mm.
Provenance: The pipe has passed by direct descent from Albert Einstein to the present owner.
Einstein was rarely without his pipe: even after being advised by his doctor to give up smoking, he continued to carry one on his person – if only to place it, empty, in his mouth, where he would chew upon it. The present pipe bears the marks of this use in meditative moments, the mouthpiece being obviously chewed. At least two other pipes with Einstein provenance are known, held in institutional collections: one is at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where it is the single most requested item in the Modern Physics collection, and another at the Historical Society of Princeton. Both were given by Einstein to friends, around 1947 and 1953 respectively. The present pipe bears an intriguing resemblance to that shown in pictures from 1945 of Einstein with the Soviet spy Margarita Konenkova, with whom he conducted an affair: indeed, in one of a series of affectionate letters to Konenkova, written on 27 November 1945, Einstein wrote: ‘everything here reminds me of you: 'Almar's' [their shared term of endearment, a combination of their names] shawl, the dictionaries, the wonderful pipe that we thought was gone, and really all the many little things in my hermit's cell’.
Special notice
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