Charatan’s Make Belvedere Free Shape Extra Large Smooth Rhodesian 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 (later of Dunhill, then Sasieni fame), Stan Haney (later of Ashby Hall), Dennis Marshall (later of Milville), and Ken Barnes and Barry Jones (later of James Upshall).

Charatan’s “Free Shape” pipes are quite rare. As far as designs went, they were somewhere between a standard Charatan and a freehand, but did not technically belong to either category. Unlike standard Charatan pipes, they were not made in accordance with the factory’s house shape charts; unlike Charatan freehands, they were not shaped by hand. Instead, they were machine-turned pipes of a non-standard shape, hence the “Free Shape” nomenclature and their typical (though not always, as in the case of this one) lack of reference to manufacture “by hand.” As indicated, this towering Rhodesian is something of an anomaly, having been stamped both as a Free Shape and with the “MADE BY HAND” nomenclature that was used for freehand pipes. Perhaps a mixture of techniques, traditional and non-traditional, were involved in its shaping, to the point where it ended up on the borderline between the two, as far as Charatan was concerned. In any case, as it does use the block-letter “MADE BY HAND” nomenclature, this one is likely to have been made between approximately 1961 and 1965, during the celebrated first Lane era of Charatan pipes.

The condition is fair. Minor rim darkening, chamber slightly over-reamed, some handling marks, and stem slightly over-buffed at the base.

Details:

Length: 6.8″ / 172.7mm

Bowl Width: 1.06 / 26.92mm

Bowl Depth: 1.99″ / 50.54mm

Weight: 2.3oz / 68g