Dunhill 1983 Root Briar 41129 Smooth Stack Billiard 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.

The mid-1970s to mid-1980s was an interesting time for Dunhill from the perspective of pipe design. This was the period when Alfred Dunhill Ltd. rolled out its new, standardized shape system, compressing the scores of shapes within the make’s catalog into a modular schema. Each major component of a pipe shape, from as its overall size, to the style of the bowl, to the cut of the mouthpiece, being assigned a number and a position in a simple sequence of digits; almost every pipe shape that Dunhill made could be expressed in such a sequence. Counterintuitively, however, this standardization of Dunhill’s aesthetics brought with it, for a time at least, a whole host of unusual shapes, many of which are not in production today, or only appear in the form of occasional Quaint shapes.

The reason that the early years of Dunhill’s shape standardization coincided with the production of some of its most unusual and non-standard shapes came down to the last digit in the new system. Today, the shape of a Dunhill pipe is specified by a 4-digit code, but originally such codes were 5-digit, with the last denoting variations on the shape specified by the first 4. These variations could be subtle, but they could also be substantial, as is the case with this one. The “base” shape is a group 4 (“4”), standard tapered stem (“1”) chimney (“12”), or a “4212.” Dunhill still manufactures the 4212, and the base shape has not changed, but it is still vastly different to this pipe, “41129,” because of that one last digit, the “9.” It introduced a Zulu-like curvature into what would otherwise be a fairly traditional straight chimney (designated “41122” at the time), resulting in something that looked somewhat Danish, or, at the very least, like something that would have come out of Dunhill’s hand-turned Collector series, rather than the factory system. It’s a lovely design, too, with its flowing figure working particularly well with the grain of the bowl, which in this instance was given only a light, smooth polished dress by way of the Root Briar finish. Once Alfred Dunhill Ltd. refined its shape standardization in the mid-1980s, the 5th digit was dropped, leaving us with the 4-digit common to the majority of Dunhill pipes made today. On the one hand, it probably made things much easier for the company and its manufacturing process, but it also brought an end to shapes like this one.

The condition is very good. Some inner rim darkening and chamber slightly over-reamed.

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.85 / 21.59mm

Bowl Depth: 1.70″ / 43.18mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g