Just as one does not need to hunt to enjoy hunting paintings and prints, one need not be — or have been — a smoker to collect smoking equipment. Over the centuries since the Spanish and Portuguese carried American tobacco almost simultaneously to Europe and the Far East, extraordinary ingenuity and art has been lavished on the paraphernalia that accompany its ingestion. Pipes from hookahs to meerschaums by way of clays and briars, snuff mulls and boxes, tobacco jars, cigarette boxes and packets, lighters, matchboxes, ash trays, advertising material, all have their connoisseurs and collectors. As smoking declines, fewer interesting things will be made, but more redundant items may find their way onto the market.

Cigar cutters make a most satisfactory interest. They perform only in two or three ways and have been produced over a comparatively short period, but there are endless variations.

As a generalisation, Spain and Southern Europe followed the Caribbean and South American preference for cigars, as did China and India (via the Spanish in the Philippines), while early English and Northern European smokers favoured Virginian pipes. The earliest English and Dutch clays date from around 1590, and the long churchwarden evolved over the next two centuries. Cigars and cheroots taken up by British soldiers in Collectionthe Peninsula, became the fashion in the 1820s, just as cigarettes were popularised three decades later by troops returning from the Crimea. As John Wilson Croker noted in 1830: “Drinking to excess has diminished greatly in the memory even of those who can remember 40 or 50 years. The taste for smoking, however, has revived, probably from the military habits of Europe during the French wars; but instead of the sober, sedentary pipe, the ambulatory cigar is now chiefly used.” British involvement in India and Burma also boosted the cigar.

The first European cigarillo factories, in Rome in 1779 and Hamburg nine years later, followed importers’ practice of sealing the ends to retain moisture and prevent flaking. Presumably teeth and penknives were used on them, since the first cutters appeared around the time of Croker’s note. Unfortunately, although there are many literary references to cigars and smoking at that time, we do not have any description of cutting, but the three basic methods, piercing, guillotining and the V-cut, were soon established. The heyday of the cigar cutter ran from about 1870 to the First World War.

The other important division, of course, is between personal implements, for the waistcoat pocket or watch chain, and larger, as it were public, cutters to take an honoured place at table. With both, makers joyfully indulged wit, whim and fancy.

Some years ago I was able to inspect a collection that had grown to about 1,000 examples over a couple of decades. I do not know whether that collector is still active, but if so he may well have accumulated as many more. The variety was wonderful. There were cutters for huntsmen modelled as foxes or hounds, palettes for artists, playing cards for gamblers, violins, pennyfarthings, bugles, jumping jacks, champagne bottles, performing elephants and many more crafted for individual tastes. There were also combination knives, scissors and vesta cases.

Clubs, common rooms and regiments were great sponsors of cigarcutting invention. In some regiments it was the custom to present an inscribed table cutter to celebrate a promotion, and although it is sometimes thought that inscriptions can bring prices down, I suspect that a legend such as “Presented to the officers of the 21st Pioneers by Lieut. A. H. Anderson on promotion to Captain, 4th May 1898” could only enhance a price by providing context.

Many of these are box tomb-shaped and quite dull; others are appropriate to the unit, including beautifully articulated artillery pieces, ships’ wheels and telegraphs, and torpedoes that may hold matches within. Smoking room and civilian table-lighters often also show great imagination, and the former are sometimes risqué. Unsurprisingly, working miniature guillotines were popular.

A notable maker in silver from 1889 until about 1915 was Harry Stewart Brown of Soho, in partnership first with Thomas Woodward and later George Knell. Their inventive products were presumably mostly one-offs. Two particularly attractive examples I recall are a silver punt, where the cutter is operated by a “stone” cider flask, and a superb vesta box, cutter and lighter in the form of a pedestal desk. Here the cutter works by depressing the writing slope, and the clippings fall into a waste-paper basket beneath. Yet another fine creation by Harry Brown is a silver bathing machine complete with belle.

The heyday of the cutter was also that of the big shots and the great shikarrees. Horn and ivory, antler and tusk provide many mounts and handles. As well as silver hounds and foxes there are crocodiles, wild boar and eagles. In the collection that I examined, there was also a handsome silver farmyard pig, made in 1905 by the Goldsmiths’ and Silversmiths’ Co, presumably for the delight of some Lord Emsworth.