Stanwell De Luxe 54 Sandblasted Billiard 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.

While Stanwell is known today for its eccentric Danish designs, the company began with the intention of crafting pipes modeled on the classics of English briars—which was part of the reason Poul Nielsen opted for the “Stanwell” name in the first place. In fact, Stanwell was manufacturing traditional billiards under the Kyringe name all the way back in the 1940s, before the switch to Stanwell was formalized. Catalogs in the early 1950s, for example, featured dozens of billiard renditions, alongside the more “Danish” Hand Cut shapes. By the end of the 1950s, most of Stanwell’s more traditional shapes—what the company originally called the Standard series—had been culled, though other traditional shapes maintained a presence throughout the decades, and indeed some survived all the way into the contemporary.

This beautifully sandblasted shape “54,” for example, first appeared around the later 1970s, replacing the previous “54,” which was one of the many Peewit variations designed by Sixten Ivarsson. One might reasonably think of this as a move by Stanwell away from its “Danish” designs and toward more conventional pipes, but the truth is quite the opposite. As a simple, lightweight saddle billiard, it is closer to Stanwell’s origins than most other shapes the company has ever made, recalling the shape “80” from Stanwell’s oldest surviving catalogs from the turn of the 1950s.

The condition is very good. Some inner rim darkening.

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.77 / 19.55mm

Bowl Depth: 1.46″ / 37.08mm

Weight: 1.2oz / 36g