James Upshall E Grade EXL Smooth Canadian Dublin (Unsmoked Estate)

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. James Upshall pipes are no longer made, but their reputation as some of the finest hand-turned British pipes continues to endure.

After Alfred Dunhill Ltd. purchased F. Charatan and Son in 1976, there were worried that the former would dilute the quality of the latter’s pipes. After all, the two had been rivals for over half a century, and each had a strong claim on the title of England’s finest pipes. Whether the quality of Charatan pipes did indeed suffer under Dunhill is a question for another time; what matters here is that, at the time this was happening, the emergence of James Upshall pipes provided a profound sense of relief for those who had worried about the future of Charatan. James Upshall was seen by many to be the “successor” of the Charatan make, something that Ken Barnes and Barry Jones leaned into as regarded marketing in the Tilshead workshop’s early years.

But the Charatan connection went much deeper than promotional materials. Many classic Charatan shapes found new life at the Tilshead workshop, for example, as did certain finishing techniques. Perhaps most importantly, the measures of quality adhered to at Charatan during its Reuben and Lane years were taken up once more for James Upshall. Barnes would later reflect that, though the alphabetical grading system adopted for James Upshall pipes was far from intuitive (not least because it did not proceed in a standard alphabetical order), these grades nonetheless each had analogs in Charatan’s grades. Thus, one could understand James Upshall pipes by precedents firmly established by Charatan; a James Upshall “P” grade was of a comparable quality to a Charatan “Distinction” grade; a “G” was in the territory of the “Selected,” or the “Supreme,” and so on.

This particular pipe is an Extra Large example of the James Upshall “E” grade, which was the third-highest quality offered by the Tilshead workshop, just under the “X” and “XX” grades. I’m not sure if Barnes ever revealed the Charatan analog for the latter two, though the “E” was, according to him, James Upshall’s version of a Charatan Coronation grade. Given just how finely grained a Coronation had to be that accolade, and given the extraordinary premium it commanded, such a comparison might seem a little immodest for a pipe maker to assert of their own works. But Barnes wasn’t just any pipe maker; he knew Charatan’s system inside and out, and had been the one to cut and prepare briar blocks for Coronation-grade pipes and to assess and award that grade once they had been turned. Judging by the nomenclature, the pipe looks to have been made after Barnes had left James Upshall, though the fineness and consistency of the grain it exhibits more than lives up to its grade and to the system that Barnes and Jones created.

This pipe is completely unsmoked. Some slight handling marks, though nothing major.

Details:

Length: 7.1″ / 180.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.91 / 23.11mm

Bowl Depth: 1.91″ / 48.51mm

Weight: 2.2oz / 64g