Dunhill 2008 Bruyere 3208 Smooth Rhodesian w/ Silver 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.

While Dunhill’s modern, 4-digit shape numbering system is incredibly precise in its specifications of each aspect of a pipe’s basic design, the “208” is something of an outlier. A shape “3103,” for example, is a group 3 size (3) pipe, with a standard-length, tapered stem (1), in the form of a classic billiard (03); similarly, a “4111” is a group 4 (4), saddle stem (1) Lovat (11). Yet a “3208” can be a group 3, saddle stem bent bulldog, or it can be a group 3, saddle stem bent Rhodesian. The latter is rarer these days, but it does, nonetheless, bear the same shape code as its diamond-shanked sibling. Things only become more complicated when it comes to army mount variations of the 3208 Rhodesian. Unlike, say, an army mount 3103 billiard, which simply adds the aforementioned mount and removes the tenon of the shape’s tapered stem, the army mount 3208 Rhodesian changes the design of the stem entirely. The shape features a distinctive, bell-like flared stem instead of a more typical saddle (which the bulldog 3208 has), a unique addition that dates back at least to Dunhill’s 1990 Christmas Pipe, though I imagine there’s an older precedent in some dusty catalog from many decades prior to that. In any case, it’s certainly not a Dunhill you see every day, even if you sell pipes for a living.

The condition is very good. Some very light, inner rim charring and slight handling marks, but well preserved nonetheless.

Details:

Length: 5.3″ / 134.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.18″ / 29.97mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 40g