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When were the first glass pipes ever made?

There is no way to accurately measure the age of lamp working because many of the techniques associated with working glass at a flame were actually in use for many thousands of years before the first lamp, or burner was invented. Ancient man is widely presumed to have discovered glass by accident in a campfire, and subsequently learned to make it in small earthen furnaces shaped like beehives. Wood was the energy they used. These were the first glass Pipes ever made out of glass that I could find.

There is not a lot of information on any history of glass pipes. The first were made in Rome around 1- 2nd century A.D. Iridescent glass pipes are extremely RARE. One reason these glass pipes & other items are so rare is that the people that made them kept the glass blowing trade a secret. Even today there are secrets that are not shared. It’s called the glass curtain. That’s when all the glass blowers keep their secrets to themselves. No secrets are revealed to anyone. But pipes of iron, bronze, clay and glass have been so frequently found associated with Roman remains and other antiquities as to lead many authorities to maintain that such pipes must have been anciently used for burning incense or for smoking aromatic herbs or some kind of tobacco. Throughout Great Britain and Ireland small clay pipes are frequently dug up, in some instances associated with Roman relics. These are known amongst the people as elfin, fairy or Celtic pipes, and in some districts supernatural agencies have been called in to account for their existence. The elfin pipes have commonly flat broad heels in place of the sharp spur now found on clay pipes, and on that flat space the mark or initials of the maker are occasionally found.

In 1330 French glass makers produced CROWN GLASS for the first time at Rouen. Some French Crown and Broad Sheet was imported into the UK.

Flint glass (Chem.)
A soft, heavy, brilliant glass, consisting essentially of a
silicate of lead and potassium. It is used for tableware, and
for optical instruments, as prisms, its density giving a high
degree of dispersive power; -- so called, because formerly
the silica was obtained from pulverized flints. Called also
Crystal Cf. Glass
Glass
1. A hard, brittle, translucent, and commonly transparent
substance, white or colored, having a conchoidal fracture,
and made by fusing together sand or silica with lime,
potash, soda, or lead oxide. It is used for window panes
and mirrors, for articles of table and culinary use, for
lenses, and various articles of ornament.

Note: Glass is variously colored by the metallic oxides; thus, manganese colors it violet; copper (cuprous),
red, or (cupric) green; cobalt, blue; uranium,
yellowish green or canary yellow; iron, green or brown;
gold, purple or red; tin, opaque white; chromium,
emerald green; antimony, yellow.

2. (Chem.) Any substance having a peculiar glassy appearance,
and a conchoidal fracture, and usually produced by fusion.

3. Anything made of glass. Especially:
(a) A looking-glass; a mirror.
(b) A vessel filled with running sand for measuring time;
an hourglass; and hence, the time in which such a
vessel is exhausted of its sand.

The introduction of the tobacco pipe into Europe is generally ascribed to Ralph Lane, first governor of Virginia, who in 1586 brought an Indian. Pipe to Sir Walter Raleigh, and taught that courtier how to use the implement. The pipe-makers of London became an incorporated body in 1619, and from England the other nations of Europe learned the art of making clay pipes.

The habit of smoking with pipes spread with incredible rapidity. Among the various peoples the pipe assumed special characteristics, and its modifications became the medium of conveying social, political and personal allusions, in many cases with little artistic skill and humour. The pipe also became the object of much inventive ingenuity, and it varied as greatly in material as in formwood, horn, bone, ivory, stone, preciotss and other metals, amber, glass, porcelain and, above all, clay being the material employed in various forms. By degrees pipes of special form and material came to be associated with particular people, e.g., the elongated painted porcelain bowls and pendulous stem of the German peasantry, the red clay bowl and long cherry wood stem of the Turk, and the very small metallic bowl and cane stem of the Japanese.

1678 CROWN GLASS was first produced in London. Because of its finer quality, this process predominated until the mid nineteenth century.

Because of the heavy duty on Flint Glass, it was common practice for bottle factories to make tableware out of bottle or window glass, and to decorate it very simply with white dots or lines to make it more acceptable. The Nailsea Crown Glass and Bottle Manufacturers were one amongst many who made this kind of glass, and they gave their name to this style, very little of which was actually made at Nailsea, being made all over the country. Typical Nailsea-style items were Flasks, Jugs, Bottles, Mugs, Vases, Bowls, Rolling Pins, Hats, Jars and Pipes from 1875 through 1899. Some Nailsea-style glassware is plain, clear glass with a slight green tint; these items were made from Crown (window) glass.

Others were made from bottle glass, in varying shades of darker green. Both these were styles of glass were often decorated with white or colored splashes or white lines, sometimes pulled or combed to give a feathered effect. This is a super example of one of the glass pipes made by this maker in the last quarter of the 19th century. It shows super workmanship. The size’s most of them were 14 to 16 inches long.

The demand for refined scientific instruments continued unabated through the 19th century. Although equipment and tools became more sophisticated, the basic material - the glass - was essentially the same as when "Crystallo" was invented 200 years before. The most commonly used types of glass were prone to leaching when exposed to caustic chemicals and had a tendency to shatter when heated and cooled repeatedly.

It is fascinating to note that some of the techniques for shaping and coloring glass were lost and rediscovered over the centuries. So that glass from Egyptian or Roman times is more ornate and complex than early medieval glassware. Up until the latter part of the 20th century, glass making was a closely guarded skill. To a certain extent, it still is. As we no longer have secret guilds to apprentice into, trial and error still seems to be the mainstay of learning to work with fusible glass.

In 1924 the scientists at the glass factories in Corning, New York invented a new, more resilient glass, which was composed of a large percentage of uncombined silica, used boron instead of soda, and contained a small percentage of aluminum for clarity. Reference eight. This new borosilicate glass, named Pyrex, had a very low coefficient of expansion and was very resistant to thermal and physical shock. Since it was about 15% lighter by volume than soda-lime or flint glass but much stronger, Pyrex was ideal for apparati. However, there was one problem: the melting temperature was so high that the old forced-air lamps could not melt it. A new method of heating the glass was now needed to work the new material.

Borrowing from the welding trade and combining oxygen and natural gas, new burners were designed that produced a flame of sufficient heat to melt Pyrex. Traditional oil lamps were replaced by torches that were clamped to the lamp worker’s bench top. These too were eventually replaced by the modern surface-mix bench burners in use today.

The advent of Pyrex revolutionized lamp working in North America. It was almost as if lamp working was invented all over again. Although developed for scientific instruments, Pyrex soon found its way into the hands of artisans who adapted the glass for "artistic" and novelty pieces. ‘Glassblowers’ began showing up at county fairs and tourist attractions across the US making and selling their items in front of appreciative crowds. All across America, the public came to associate ‘glassblowing’ with the lamp workers. Lamp worked art is being shown and sold alongside the more traditional mediums of glass blowing and casting, as well as painting and sculpture, in the finest art galleries in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Around the world, flame working artists of all nations share a hunger for knowledge, both technical and esoteric, that will drive the development of this medium for years to come.