James Upshall P Grade Group 6 Smooth Lumberman 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. James Upshall pipes are no longer made, but their reputation as some of the finest hand-turned British pipes continues to endure.

It has been said that James Upshall was the natural inheritor to Charatan. In fact, this was observed so early on in the Tilshead workshop’s operations that the US distributor for James Upshall coined slogan “The Tradition Continues…” for marketing purposes. The implication was that James Upshall was Charatan—i.e., the finest, hand-turned pipes currently being made in England—now that Charatan had been sold to Dunhill. There was much more to the relationship between Charatan and James Upshall than one might initially have thought, however. James Upshall made Charatan-quality pipes, but it also made pipes that were intimately connected to Charatan in design. When looking at old James Upshall catalogs, for example, one finds that the workshop sold their own version of the Newmarket, a shape created by Reuben Charatan, and even used the “Newmarket” name in those catalogs. Plenty of other pipes left the Tilshead workshop without being so explicitly named after Charatan’s versions, but which were nonetheless clear homages. The Winston, the Trafalgar, and indeed the Cup and Saucer could be found amongst James Upshall’s output (though the latter had been Barry Jones’s invention back when he worked under Reuben). With a pipe like this one, it is more subtle, but still one notices connections to a classic shape that Charatan put its own spin on: the lumberman. This would not be one of the several renditions from the Lane era, but rather the Reuben era “Lumberman,” whose paneled form was distinct from this one only in its tapered stem (today, we would call such shapes Canadians, but things weren’t quite so standardized back then). As a final homage to its progenitor, this James Upshall lumberman is dressed in the workshop’s P grade contrast finish, one conceived with the intention of emulating Charatan’s Perfection line (though which was intended to be closer in quality to a Distinction). The tradition continues indeed…

This pipe is completely unsmoked. Some very slight scratches on the bowl, though nothing major.

Details:

Length: 6″ / 152.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.81 / 20.57mm

Bowl Depth: 1.70″ / 43.18mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g