Charatan’s Make Reuben Era (c. 1958-60) Executive Extra Large Smooth Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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 (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).

Though it bears the “L” stamp of Herman Lane’s Lane Ltd., the style of this Charatan, including with tapered mouthpiece, as well as its “FH” stamp seem to point not to the Lane era, but to the late Reuben era of around 1958-1960 (the “L” was used solely for US distribution purposes by Lane Ltd. from 1955 until around 1961, after which Herman Lane took full control of F. Charatan & Son). The majority of Charatan’s earliest freehands—originally marked “FH” for “Free Hand”—were, after all, closer to the classics of Anglo-French design than the freehands that came in later decades. In the case of this one, it’s almost like someone took the shapes “42” “Giant Billiard” and “22” apple from Charatan’s 1950s catalog and blended them together. The result is certainly beautiful, but what’s perhaps even more striking is just how close it is to the plump Danish brandy renditions that would not start to appear until several decades after this one was made. The 1950s “Danish” style was very different to that of the 1960s onward, so it’s fascinating to see how much this one prefigures the pipes of, say, those in the Bjarne and W.O. Larsen milieus. Given that it was made so early into the life of the Charatan freehand workshop, it will have been carved by someone like Barry Jones, Dan Tennison, or even Reuben Charatan himself—craftsmen who, even amidst a contemporaneous boom in Danish freehands, had a knack for being ahead of the curve.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating. Some slight handling marks on the bowl, though nothing major.

Details:

Length: 6.8″ / 172.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.90 / 22.86mm

Bowl Depth: 1.76″ / 44.70mm

Weight: 2.5oz / 72g