Kaywoodie c.1950s White Briar Prototype 26 Smooth Churchwarden Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Kaywoodie pipes are as American as apple pie. Starting in 1919 as a pipe brand for KB&B, a pipe shop dating all the way back to 1851, Kaywoodie has since then been a staple of American-made pipes. In the present, many Kaywoodies are collectors’ items, in addition to being fantastic smokers.

Kaywoodie’s White Briar made its first catalog appearance in the mid-1950s, though it would appear that its grand debut was a couple of years earlier in that same decade. Despite looking like a meerschaum pipe, the bowls were, as the name indicates, turned from briar root, before being dressed in a very unconventional, opaque, glossy white finish. Aside from looking distinctive, this finish was intended to be resistant to wear and fading, so that the pipe would always retain “its lustre and sparkling whiteness.” A fair few White Briars were made by Kaywoodie during the 20th century, though this one is quite different to others of its kind. Kaywoodie enthusiasts may note that it does not conform to the shape “26” seen in Kaywoodie’s catalogs, which was a faceted “Triangle Setter Billiard,” nor indeed to the “26B,” a small apple from Kaywoodie’s “In-Between” shapes.

Kaywoodie enthusiasts may also note that it does not look like a standard Kaywoodie churchwarden shape, such as the 95, nor indeed any churchwarden shape in the make’s long history. The closest shape to it would be a Belge rendition, such as the 52B “Belgian,” though even then, Kaywoodie’s Belges were never typically this long. It is, however, quite clearly modeled on the kind of clay tavern pipes out of which the briar Belge shape descended. As it happens, Kaywoodie did not put this pipe, a White Briar 26 churchwarden-Belge, into regular production. This one came in a box of Kaywoodie prototypes from around the midcentury, including a 1934 Drinkless Suntan Rock Ambera, and a 1951 AllBriar which are yet to be listed. Having double-checked this claim with Kaywoodie historian Nathan Davis, a former pipe maker under S.M. Frank’s Bill Feuerbach and the current owner of the Kaywoodie make, Davis agreed that the pipe seen here did not enter into regular production and that it must have been a prototype, or a one-off at the least. As this pipe features Kaywoodie’s famous Drinkess four-hole stinger, and as the White Briar debuted in the 1950s, we estimate that this pipe is a 1950s make.

This pipe is completely unsmoked.

Details:

Length: 10″ / 254mm

Bowl Width: 0.72 / 18.28mm

Bowl Depth: 1.44″ / 36.57mm

Weight: 0.9oz / 28g