Charatan’s Make Lane Era Free Hand Relief Sandblasted Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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 (who went on to work at Dunhill, before leaving again to start the Sasieni make), Dan Tennison, Stan Haney (later of Ashby Hall), and Ken Barnes and Barry Jones (later of James Upshall).

Charatan’s very first sandblasted pipes appeared during the Reuben era, back when Reuben Charatan owned and oversaw F. Charatan & Son, and was, at least at first, not undertaken in-house. Sandblasting as a technology, of course, predated pipes, and it has been used in a variety of industrial and artistic settings since its invention. Thus, in the beginning, Reuben Charatan had his pipes sent over to a glazing company to do the blasting, though the results were, reportedly, far from ideal. Ultimately Charatan brought sandblasting in-house, where the results were much improved, and out of which was born one of the most iconic sandblast finishes of the 20th century. Sandblasted Charatans were, during the Reuben and early Lane eras, left with a natural finish, not unlike the Dunhill Tanshell that emerged around the same time, allowing for a pipe that would, similarly, take on a more golden patina over time. Another consequence of this approach was that the densely craggy textures of such pipes was laid bare. This Charatan, for example, is one of the make’s famous “freehand” pipes, in the form of the sandblast-grade Free Hand Relief. Relatively classical in shaping (as earlier Charatan freehands tended to be), it is nonetheless strikingly thorough in finish, revealing deep layers of consistent ring grain around the entirety of the bowl.

This pipe is completely unsmoked. Some minor stem oxidation.

Details:

Length: 6.1″ / 154.9mm

Bowl Width: 0.82 / 20.82mm

Bowl Depth: 1.68″ / 42.67mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g