Dunhill 1983 Shell Briar 41022 Sandblasted Bent Billiard w/ Bamboo 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.

During and after the Second World War, pipe makers across the world suffered a briar shortage. Different companies solved this problem in different ways, with one solution being to make the briar part of a pipe smaller (meaning less briar was used) and making up the rest of the length with some kind of extension. One of the extension materials used was a type of bamboo, which came from Asia. The shorthand for this type of bamboo (along with a variety of others) is whangee. Whangee originally comes from a Mandarin term, 黃藜, or huáng lí, in pinyin. Following the war, Dunhill began using bamboo shank extensions, with these pipes stamped with a “W” for precisely that.

Once the briar shortage eased, Dunhill continued to utilize bamboo in their pipe designs, though much less frequently, and without the Whangee appellation. Instead, these pipes were reserved for things like the “Collectors’ Range” and other occasional releases. This near-churchwarden length Shell Briar, for example, comes from 1983, and is a genuinely impressive specimen of a pipe—one for the collectors, indeed. Had it been made just three years later, I’d expect it to have earned an extra Ring Grain grade for its finishing but, alas, that was not introduced until 1986.

The condition is great. Minor wear to the inner rim and very slight finish fading.

 

Details:

Length: 7.3″ / 185.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.61″ / 40.89mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g