Dunhill 2010 Shell Briar ODA 840 XL Bent Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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.

For over 100 years, the name “Dunhill” has been associated with a large number of iconic pipe shapes, such as the early, eminently functionalist “Windshield” pipe, the strange (even by today’s standards) “UT” “beehive”, the neoclassical “cavalier,” and the extra squat “O” bulldog. But there is one genre of shapes that Dunhill has managed to lay claim to in popular imagination, despite being one of the simplest and most widely produced in the history of pipes. That shape is the bent billiard. Over the last century, Dunhill has produced a large variety of bent billiards in different shapes and sizes, with many of them being simply forgotten. But the one guaranteed to never die is the tall-bowled, swan-neck, extra large, 3/4 bent billiard, simply known as the “LC.” While the LC has long been out of [Dunhill] production, there is one other shape that might well be the next best thing: the “semi-giant” OD 840. Or, at least, OD 840 renditions with a tapered stem. Dunhill’s OD shapes are rarely produced and, like its Quaint shapes, subject to the ever-fickle nature of briar. And when OD 840 shapes have been produced, they have, more often than not, been fitted with saddle stems. On those even rarer occasions where Dunhill produces an OD 840 without a saddle, the result is a pipe that retains much of the shaping of the LC, but with just a little more heft to it. This ODA 840 from 2010 is one such pipe. Dressed in Shell Briar finish, it also features exactly the deep, black and burgundy tones and crisp, craggy ring grain sandblasting associated with the legendary Dunhills of old.

This pipe is also completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating. It comes with its original box and sleeve.

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.86 / 21.84mm

Bowl Depth: 2.00″ / 50.80mm

Weight: 2.6oz / 76g