Dunhill 2003 Thames Oak Shell Briar w/ Tamper 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 river Thames, which runs for miles through London, England, has a special place in the history of pipe smoking, albeit an odd one. For centuries, the Thames was—to put it mildly—a popular place to discard one’s clay pipe once it was no longer deemed to be of further use. As such, thousands of clays have found their final resting place on the bed of the Thames, with the river’s soft, muddy bed having preserved them in the hundreds of years since. Occasionally these pipes make their way closer to the banks of the Thames, where they are periodically rediscovered by “mudlarking” communities (think beachcombing, but quite a bit messier).
In 2003, Dunhill released a special, limited edition pipe in honor of the historic Thames river and the city it runs through. But the way they did this was very unique, even among Dunhill’s standard design practices. The pipe commemorated not just modern London, but its earliest instantiation as the Roman capital city of Londinium, founded in the 1st century, AD. Instead of a clay pipe, Dunhill’s pipe was a rather craggy, ring grain sandblasted briar billiard from the make’s signature Shell line. But it was also adorned with two materials never before seen on a Dunhill: titanium and bog oak (also known as morta). The bog oak came from the Thames itself and was professionally dated by the London Museum to around the time of Londinium’s founding. Together with the titanium (engraved with an outline of the titular river) and two 14 karat gold pins, it would form the pipe’s collar. Tampers were also made from this Thames bog oak, which were similarly fitted with a titanium “foot.”
This is one of those pipes, making for a singular piece in the collection of any British history and/or pipe enthusiast.

The condition is great. Smoked once or twice, but very gently. The pipe comes with its original presentation case, bog oak and titanium tamper, and Dunhill’s accompanying certificate of authenticity and guarantee of provenance of the materials used in the pipe’s construction.

 

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.63″ / 41.40mm

Weight: 1.6oz / 48g