Charatan’s Make 4420DC Sandblasted Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates

Description

While Dunhill may be Britain’s most famous pipe brand, Charatan is not only older, but has the honor of being the first to have made its pipes entirely in-house. ‘Charatan’s Make’ referred to the fact that, at a time when other pipe companies were sourcing stummels and stems carved from other companies before assembling them in their factories and workshops, Charatan made every part of their pipes on the Charatan premises. So began a legacy of high-quality pipe-making under the Charatan name, one whose employees, at one time or another, included Joel Sasieni, and Ken Barnes and Barry Jones of James Upshall fame.

Charatan is, along with Dunhill and Barling’s Make, one of the brands that came to define a good, sandblast finish in the 20th century, though funnily enough the very first Charatans to be finished in this manner were done so by an outside party that specialized in glassware (sandblasting was, after all, originally a technology with quite different applications to pipe design). Still, Charatan secured itself a place in the pantheon of of good blasts, not least because of their rich texturing and the relatively light finishing applied after that process. This one is a dead ringer for a Dunhill Tanshell as far as the bowl is concerned, and might even be mistaken for a extra large one (an ODA, for example) if not for the signature Double Comfort stem it’s fitted with.

The condition is very good. Chamber slightly over-reamed and a little wear to the inner rim.

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.97 / 24.63mm

Bowl Depth: 1.77″ / 44.95mm

Weight: 1.9oz / 56g