Dunhill 1968 Root Briar 137 Smooth Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates

Description

To veteran pipe smokers, Dunhill needs no introduction. Beginning in 1907, Alfred Dunhill began selling Dunhill pipes at the tobacconist shop he owned on London’s Duke Street. Very quickly, these pipes gained the reputation of being the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of pipes due to how expertly crafted they were. Today, Dunhill is likely Britain’s most famous pipe manufacturer, and continues to produce some of the most treasured pipes a smoker can buy.

Dunhill’s mid-century shape “137” is by no means a common one. It was, as one Dunhill catalog put it, a part of the make’s “Collectors’ Range,” as opposed to other, “Classic” shapes, whose pipes were “less readily available” than the latter “due to limits imposed by the natural growth of the briar root.” Uncommonness in quantity was therefore a consequence of uncommonness in the pipe’s qualities: the shape is unconventionally long and tall, with a distinct forward cant that almost approaches that of a Zulu (or, technically, a yachtsman). The chamber capacity is, as a consequence, also far greater than the average group 4 size Dunhill, to which the 137 belonged. As it’s a Dunhill, however, this size in no way impedes the pipe from being wonderfully lightweight. This one, from the tail end of Dunhill’s much-celebrated 1960s shows off beautifully what the 137 shape was capable of, in the form of explosions of bird’s-eye at either flank, joined by cross grain at the bowl’s rear and fore.

The condition is very good. Some minor wear to the rim, including a slight nick on on the top left side of the bowl, some fading of the nomenclature (though still legible) and a very slightly over-buffed stem at its base.

Details:

Length: 6.4″ / 162.5mm

Bowl Width: 0.84 / 21.33mm

Bowl Depth: 1.76″ / 44.70mm

Weight: 1.3oz / 38g