Stanwell (Early 1950s) Hand Cut 09 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.

As the story goes, Stanwell was originally intended to compete with traditional Anglo-French briars, to the point of inventing the “Stanwell” name so that the brand (formerly known as “Kyringe”) sounded more “English.” But, as the story also goes, Poul Nielsen’s meeting with Sixten Ivarsson at Suhr’s Pibemageri would change the course of Stanwell pipes forever, as Nielsen (who later changed his surname to Stanwell) commissioned more and more modern shapes, not only from Ivarsson, but from the emerging world of “Danish design.” The earliest surviving catalog from this period in its history is an interesting one. It is essentially divided into two distinct series of pipes, one traditional (the “Standard” series) and one modern (the “Hand Cut”) and, oddly enough, there are instances of the same shape code being used for different shapes (one from the Standards, the other from the Hand Cuts). The Hand Cut series was dominated by Sixten Ivarsson’s designs, though these were, for the most part, “neoclassical,” rather than thoroughly “fancy” (in the Danish sense), being rather elegant re-imaginings and hybrids of more traditional staples. This pipe, for example, is Stanwell’s very first recorded use of the “09” shape code. Belonging to the Hand Cut series, it’s an earl Ivarsson design that blends the bell Dublin, the Liverpool, and the stack, while also being rather compact and exceedingly lightweight. It features in the early 1950s Stanwell catalog, as well as the 1960 Export Catalog, but would appear to have been discontinued not long after. This particular pipe, however, bears the original Stanwell stem logo, a rather modest, white letter “S.” Stanwell did not adopt the crowned “S” stem logo until the later 1950s (something it has retained as part of the brand identity ever since), making this 09 a very old, very uncommon piece of Danish pipe history.

The condition is fair. Some inner rim charring, stem slightly over-buffed, and worn nomenclature (it’s faint, but readable under the right light).

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.71 / 18.03mm

Bowl Depth: 1.73″ / 43.94mm

Weight: 0.8oz / 24g