Ashton Brindle LX Panel Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates

Description

Ashton is an English pipe brand created by William Ashton Taylor, a former Dunhill pipe-maker who left Dunhill in the 1980s to make pipes under his own name. Along with other pipe-makers such as Ken Barnes and Barry Jones of James Upshall and Les Wood of Ferndown, Ashton emerged as part of a new wave of high end, hand made British pipes in the late 20th century.

One thing Ashton has always excelled at is sandblasting. That’s not to say only Ashton sandblasts are good pipes – I happen to have a couple of gorgeous Sovereign grade pipes – but their blasts are a significant reason for their renown. Take this Brindle, dressed in the dark burgundy stain and fitted with the Ashtonite brindle stem from which the series takes its name; it is deliberately, deeply sandblasted so as to express the growth rings of the briar used, resulting in something that evokes the early Dunhill patent Shell pipes, or the pipes that would become the Barling’s make Fossil series. I would say that this particular Ashton has 360 degrees of consistent, tight ring grain, but that wouldn’t quite be true – not because the rings aren’t consistent, but because the bowl of this one is octagonal, meaning it technically has 1080 degrees of them!

The condition is excellent. There may be a little bit of rim darkening, but if so, it blends very well into the burgundy stain and is therefore very difficult to notice.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.86 / 21.84mm

Bowl Depth: 1.64″ / 41.65mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 48g