Smoke signals
If you recently kicked the habit and have just stubbed out your last Marlboro Light, then the National Tobacco Museum is probably not for you at the moment. But for anyone else, it’s highly recommended as it offers an insightful look back at the history of tobacco over the last four centuries.
Trace the history of smoking, sniffing and chewing in Wervik
Tobacco has been cultivated in Flanders since 1650, with the fields around Wervik in West Flanders being the industry’s centre of productivity. The golden age was immediately after the Second World War and then again between 1970 and 1985. However, in the ’90s the tobacco industry declined rapidly. By 2000, only 450 hectares were planted, and last year the figure was down to around 100 hectares.
The reason is obvious. Awareness of the health hazards of smoking has increased, so demand has fallen, particularly for the heavy variety of pipe tobacco grown around Wervik. In parallel has come the gradual reduction in EC subsidies given to Belgian tobacco farmers. “By 2010 no more subsidies will be available, and tobacco production in Flanders will completely cease,” says the museum’s non-smoking curator, Vincent Verbrugge.
Photographs in the entrance lobby show Flemish tobacco farmers in their heyday: sowing seeds under glass, planting seedlings in the spring, harvesting in the summer, hanging the leaves in drying sheds. All of these operations have always been conducted manually in Flanders. Contrast this approach with the vast tobacco plantations of Maryland and Virginia, where giant harvesters cruise through the fields and scythe down whole tobacco plants.
The museum houses a huge collection of pipes, including the earliest made of white clay, some of them with incredibly long stems of over half a metre. Meerschaum, a type of Mediterranean clay, was also commonly used. Easily carved, it heralded the appearance of the pipe as an art form. Check out the museum’s meerschaum pipes in the form of famous politicians and heads of state. Look out too for the musketeer’s pipe. Its tiny built-in mirror might have enabled d’Artagnan to spot an enemy creeping up behind him while he was enjoying a relaxing puff.
And you certainly won’t want to miss the collection of 19th-century erotic pipes, which you lean down and glimpse through peep holes. Priests in particular were apparently renowned for being avid collectors of the most vulgar examples. Perhaps sucking on a pipe in the shape of a curvaceous naked woman helped them resist the temptations of the flesh.
By the 1700s, snuff – ground tobacco snorted up the nose – was the tobacco product of choice, and the museum has an interesting collection of antique snuff boxes. Napoleon was an avid snuffer, as was Pope Benedict XIII. He clearly disagreed with one of his predecessors, Pope Urban VIII, who had earlier threatened to excommunicate Catholics caught using snuff.
The museum also records the popularity of cigars in the 19th century, and the explosive growth in cigarettes in Flanders during and after the First World War. Not to be forgotten is chewing tobacco, which was particularly popular in places where a naked flame was not tolerated, such as coal mines or in local flax factories.
The museum also has an excellent reconstruction of a tobacconist’s shop from the 1920s, with all the necessary tools of the trade. Wervik is virtually on the French border, and when tobacco was cheaper there than in France, there was a thriving but illicit cross-border trade. “The tobacconist used a special press to squash a customer’s newly purchased packet of tobacco,” explains Verbrugge. “The customer could then stuff the flat packet down his trousers and smuggle it across the border.”
A further interesting tool is the cigar slicer. A customer in search of a cigar would light one up, have a few puffs and, if he liked it, would slice off the burning top and purchase it.
In another authentic reconstruction – a tobacco farmer’s living room – pride of place is given to a smoker’s chair. At the end of a busy day in the fields, the farmer would sit “the wrong way” on it, resting his arms and, therefore, his pipe on the back of the chair. The upholstered hinged top lifts up to reveal a space where pipes and tobacco could be stored.
Other rooms in this extremely spacious museum focus on themes such as tobacco in art, in advertising and in the movies. The children’s activity room is used to educate school groups on the health risks of smoking. If the weather is fine, you can stroll around the museum garden, where different varieties of tobacco are grown.
It has nothing to do with tobacco, but within the museum’s premises is a working windmill. On Sundays from May to September, if the wind is good, it whirrs into action to grind flour, which you can take home with you. It brings your tour of a rather unhealthy product to a wholesome end.
