Sasieni Patent Fantail 71 Rusticated Billiard Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates

Description

Along with names like Barling, Charatan, and Dunhill Sasieni holds a special place in the history of English smoking pipes – one near to its very beginnings. So the story goes, Sasieni himself worked for Dunhill during its early days. But eventually he left Dunhill, having his own ideas about how pipes should be made, and founded Sasieni. This was 1919, and Sasieni has been the closest thing to a household name in English pipes ever since.

In 1953, Sasieni secured a patent on the “Fantail” mouthpiece, a relatively novel stem design whose name derived from its “fanning” movement as it progressed from base to button. Not unlike Herman Lane’s Double Comfort stem, it was designed to be especially easy on the jaw when clenched. But whereas the Double Comfort was essentially a double-stepped saddle, the Fantail was a fishtail with just about everything extraneous to function removed. Comfort for Sasieni was a matter of lightness in weight and balance, which is why they claimed that even someone with dentures would be able to keep a Fantail pipe firmly in their mouth (and bear in mind that denture technology was not quite what it is now back in the 1950s). True to their word, this Fantail is extremely lightweight, coming in at just over an ounce, despite being over 6 inches in length and retaining a good amount of chamber capacity. It is dressed in Sasieni’s unique Rustic finish, a form of hand-hewn rustication that carefully followed natural grain patterns, not unlike modern artisan sandblasting.

The condition is very good. A couple of superficial scratches on the rim and very minor inner rim darkening. The pipe comes with its original box.

 

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.87 / 22.09mm

Bowl Depth: 1.37″ / 34.79mm

Weight: 1.1oz / 32g