James Upshall A Grade Group Smooth “371” Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

James Upshall was, along with Ferndown and Ashton, part of a new wave of British hand-made, high-grade pipes in the late 20th century, with their founders largely coming from previous positions in the factories of companies such as Dunhill and Charatan. James Upshall was founded in 1978 by Barry Jones and Ken Barnes, both of whom had previously worked for Charatan and who had worked their way up to being carvers Charatan’s higher-end, non-standard shapes. Jones and Barnes’ pipes quickly grew to being something of a status symbol, and were enjoyed by King Hussein of Jordan, Anwar Sadat, Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Robert Wagner and Tom Selleck. The company also made house-brand pipes for Astleys in London. Sadly, James Upshall pipes are no longer made, but their reputation as some of the finest hand-turned British pipes lives on.

When James Upshall pipes first came to the United States, Pete Siegel (of Marble Arch, their original US distributor) coined a phrase that would become a core part of the workshop’s identity: “The tradition continues.” Siegel considered Barnes and Jones’ outfit to be the true heirs to Charatan, along with the legacy F. Charatan and Son had developed through the tenures of Frederick Charatan, Reuben Charatan, and Herman Lane. Dunhill had recently acquired the Charatan brand from Lane, and a popular view was that this would be detrimental to the tradition of high-grade, handmade English pipes that Charatan had set in motion. But it was not only the quality of Charatan pipes that continued through James Upshall. Indeed, many of the iconic shapes created at Charatan, such as the Newmarket and the Bell Dublin, found a new life in Barnes and Jones’ workshop. This beautifully grained “A” grade James Upshall is another example of an old Charatan shape that Jones will have known by muscle memory long before it was made: the 371, also known as the Trafalgar (not to be confused with the Trafalgar line of Charatan pipes introduced much later). A hybrid of the poker (or perhaps even cutty) and Dublin shapes, it’s a design defined by its pronounced, rounded “foot” at the base of its traditional Dublin bowl. While not as extravagant as many of the Charatan freehands, nor indeed the Danish freehands F. Charatan and Son soon found itself competing with, the 371 is, nonetheless, a design that fans of classic English pipes are unlikely to forget—and one that the boys at James Upshall certainly didn’t.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 6.5″ / 165.1mm

Bowl Width: 0.84 / 21.33mm

Bowl Depth: 1.78″ / 45.21mm

Weight: 2.18oz / 62g