for decades, A major piece of counterculture history was tucked behind the bed in Merle Sanders’ San Francisco home.
The unfinished pipe looks like something a teenager would put together on cobblestones at a summer camp, but according to art historian Steve Cabella, it’s basically religious.A so-called “spirit pipe”, this particular pot appliance was made by an LSD pioneer Augustus Ausley Stanley for Grateful Dead front man Jerry Garciaand it has been MIA for decades.
“I’ve bought party pipes from rock folks before,” says Cabella, owner of California antiques store The Modern i. rolling stone. They’re just funny little things. they have no history. There are no lost stories. No lost connections. This is another object. It’s kind of the holy grail in many ways. [Jerry] At the time, he was smoking this pipe that was playing music, and that was where he got his spirit, his creativity. ” rolling stone We reached out to the band for comment, but received no response.
of Grateful Dead Owsley’s history is intertwined like drugs and rock and roll. Stanley, whose name is officially in the dictionary describing strains of pure LSD, was the band’s original soundman and financial backer. He developed their signature Wall of Sound, helped design their logo and, of course, kept them in tune with their LSD. The band even immortalized Stanley with a song: 1967’s “Alice D. Millionaire” arrest So-called”king of acidAlthough he was close with the band as a whole, Stanley was particularly drawn to Garcia.and 2007 interview rolling stoneStanley described the Dead frontman as “the sun at the center of the solar system. Remove the sun and the planets all go their own ways. Garcia was the center. When he stopped searching, the whole scene stopped searching.” I did.”
That arrest wouldn’t be the last of Stanley’s legal troubles. In the early ’70s, he finally ended up in prison, where he honed the skills he later used to make Garcia’s spirit pipes, and other parts of what he called “carvings to wear,” according to Cabella. Rhoney Stanley, Owsley’s former LSD partner in crime, said: rolling stone When she visited him in prison, he gave her one of his first works. “He always had to have the best material. He was an artist. I was so impressed that he found a way out of prison.”
Roney says she never received a “spirit pipe” from Stanley, but she did make one in the shape of a whale, along with other jewelry. She also learned how to create wearable sculptures using casting techniques she had acquired for entering dental school. Osley and Me: My LSD Family, Ronnie explains that Stanley gifted her with that heart of metal. This is for you,’ she recalls him saying. to purchase a white Pegasus with ruby eyes.)
In Cabella’s opinion, Stanley has never been better. “It’s really cute when you look at Ausley’s early rock posters,” he says. “It’s like an eighth grader made them. They’re very basic, as are his jewelery skills. … [Jerry’s pipe] It looks like someone who went to art school for a few years did the best they could. It looks like it was made by a hippie. ”
“In my opinion, Stanley was never a great artist,” he adds. “Copied, borrowed, or stolen are not appropriate words, but he used other people’s designs or had others make the designs he had in his head. I did.”
As for Stanley, Cabella has carved out a niche in the art world. He says he first met him in a jewelry-making class at the College of Marine in the late ’80s. Then I got a Stanley brass belt buckle shaped like the cover of The Dead’s 1976 album. Steel Your Face From a poster collector. Cabela gained a solid reputation as a purveyor of all things Dead-related about 20 years ago when he came across a red 1949 Studebaker truck while archiving a jeweler’s estate in Berkeley. He got the track for the song, only to find out later that it belonged to Stanley during the time he was making sounds for the Dead. Dubbed his Dread Dormammu, after the Dr. Strange villain, the truck sold to a private collector three years ago for around $24,000.
His experience with dead items, especially those associated with Stanley, led Cabella to discover a Garcia pipe behind a built-in bed while renovating his father’s house, some ten years later, Merle Saunders. It became a natural first stop for Juniors. death in 2008Saunders Jr. sold it to Cabella for thousands of dollars.Sanders Jr. replied rolling stoneconfirmed he had sold the pipe to Cabella, but did not respond to follow-ups.
Cabella says Sanders Jr. told him that Garcia kept the pipes at his father’s house after the rock star died. arrested With a briefcase of drugs in Golden Gate Park in 1985. He briefly gave up drugs after his arrest. rainforest blues With Sanders, and on many other occasions.
“Pipes are something special,” said Merle Saunders’ son [no one else smoked out of it]says Cabella. “It was Jerry’s pipe. Only Jerry’s pipe. It was obviously used, but it never became a party pipe. It’s the only reason it still exists.
When Cabella first acquired the pipe, he was not fully aware of its history. Indeed, a letter from Saunders Jr. stated that it was “a personal gift from Oudsley to Jerry,” but it is not clear that it was actually made by Stanley, and why and when. It took some research to find out. From Stanley’s work and history, Cabella was able to confirm that the pipe was made by the man himself. provided. First, there was an ivory medallion at the bottom of the pipe, crudely carved with the image of a large cat sitting proudly in the center of the setting sun.image is the same as the cover Jerry Garcia The band’s 1978 album, cat under the starry skyFrom there, Cabella was able to deduce roughly when the pipe was made.
And there was a carved statue of a crouching tiger on the hillside.Again, crudely, it’s a dead ringer in the inlaid design of Garcia’s famous guitar, Tiger, made by Luthier’s Doug Irwin in the late ’70s. (Irwin did not respond.) did rolling stonerequest for comment.) Cabella believes the tiger was Garcia’s spirit animal and was given to him by Stanley. Talk The origin of Tiger’s guitar. When shown another Irwin instrument called “The Rosewood,” Garcia captured an image of a large cat inlaid on an electronic plate.
“Owsley anointed people with spirit animals. Owsley’s first partner [Melissa Cargill] Cabella speculates that Garcia was given his own spirit name and was given a spirit pipe with its image, and is called an owl. , the image will not be made public. “You don’t show these things to people. You don’t show your mental pipes,” he says. “They’re nothing new. It’s like finding something religious. It becomes a historic landmark. There’s a responsibility there.”
Cabella seems reluctant to sell the work or keep it in an old museum. “I’m very interested in the preservation and education of exhibitions, so the next place this exists is not just a pot museum…it’s more than that,” he says. “I don’t want to end up in a place where someone smokes. That was Jerry’s job.”