Charatan’s Make Reuben Era (c.1958-60) Executive Smooth Dublin Sitter (Unsmoked Estate)

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).

I’ve always said that F. Charatan and Son was one of the great pioneers in traditional and modern briar pipes, and I’m hardly alone in that estimation. As has been repeated numerous times in our listings, Frederick Charatan and his son (and eventual successor) Reuben Charatan were early proponents of straight grained pipes as the pinnacle of the craft, and it was under Reuben’s tenure that Charatan opened up England’s first, dedicated freehand workshop at the end of the 1950s. When Herman Lane entered the picture, he took these aspects of the Charatan make and amplified them like never before, with Charatan pipes ultimately becoming some of the most prestigious (and expensive) briars in the world. Even more impressive is that Charatan was able to do this amidst a surge in demand for Danish pipes, especially the freehand variety.

As such, older Charatan pipes have a habit of anticipating design trends (when not establishing them outright) long before the fact. Some, however, appear as though they were transported from the future. Those familiar with the late 20th and early 21st century Danish and American artisan scenes, for example, may be familiar with the various Dublin sitter renditions made by figures such as Tonni Nielsen, Teddy Knudsen, Premal Chheda, or Brad Pohlmann (to name a few), and while such pipes have tended to be somewhat more balletic and technically challenging than this Charatan, the resemblance is, nonetheless, uncanny. The difference, of course, is that this pipe was carved decades before the works it bears the most affinity with for us in the present. As with Newton and Leibniz for the calculus, or Gray and Bell for the telephone, it seems that a great pipe design can emerge quite independently.

As for the minutiae of dating, though it bears the Lane Ltd. “L” nomenclature, this Charatan looks to have been made during the founding years of F. Charatan and Son’s freehand workshop, at the end of the 1950s. Here the mouthpiece is most telling, as the “Lane era” that began around 1960-1 (marked by Herman Lane’s acquisition of F. Charatan and Son) coincided with an important design shift for Charatan pipes, with Lane’s proprietary “Double Comfort” saddle mouthpieces becoming standard. Where there were exceptions to this rule, mouthpieces had traditional saddle cuts, rather than tapered ones, such as is seen here. Lane Ltd. did, however, have exclusive US distribution rights for Charatan pipes from 1955 onward, with US-bound pipes being stamped with the former company’s logo. This pipe should, therefore, have been made around 1958-60, which is when the block-lettered “MADE BY HAND” nomenclature featured on Charatan’s freehand pipes is purported to have been introduced, which makes it a “Reuben era” piece. Back in those days, it was Barry Jones, Dan Tennison, and Reuben Charatan himself that turned and carved the bowls for Charatan’s Straight Grain grades, of which the Executive was one.

This pipe is completely unsmoked. Some light scratches on the rim, though nothing major.

Details:

Length: 6.6″ / 167.6mm

Bowl Width: 1.14 / 28.95mm

Bowl Depth: 2.00″ / 50.8mm

Weight: 3.3oz / 96g