Stanwell (c. mid-1980s-90s) Brass Band 138 Smooth Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, Danish Estates

Description

Stanwell is one of Denmark’s most celebrated and enduring pipe companies, having been founded by Poul Nielsen shortly after the second world war. Over the last six decades, Stanwell has established itself as both a leader in innovative Danish design and for producing well-priced pipes with precision construction and engineering. Many of its designs were created for the company by iconic pipe-makers in the Scandinavian scene, such as Sixten Ivarsson, Anne Julie, Jess Chonowitsch, and Tom Eltang.

The “138” is one of the many shapes that appeared and, almost as suddenly, disappeared amidst a succession of significant changes in Stanwell’s design approach between the the mid-1980s and 1990s. This was a time when Stanwell was pivoting hard into the German market, discontinuing countless older catalog shapes, and enlisting more and more of Denmark’s master artisans to design and/or make pipes for them, including Jess Chonowitsch, Per & Ulf of S. Bang, Poul Winslow, Karl Erik, and, of course, Tom Eltang, to whom the 138 is attributed. As for the design, it’s an interesting one, in part because there were, seemingly, two slightly different iterations of the 138, with the key difference being the cut of the stem. In either iteration, the bowl was a very Danish hybrid of Dublin, horn, and pickaxe shapes, but while some 138s had a relatively traditional saddle stem, others—like this one—were slightly flared, giving the latter more of a “Danish” edge. Tangent aside, this long-discontinued shape come from the similarly discontinued Brass Band line, which featured a very classy red and gold motif, by way of an accent fashioned from two of its titular collars and one of cumberland ebonite.

The condition is good. Some rim darkening, slight finish fading, and slight, residual stem oxidation.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.83 / 21.08mm

Bowl Depth: 1.54″ / 39.11mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g