Stanwell Reg Era Royal Briar 301 Smooth Pickaxe Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

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.

In its early decades, Stanwell had a habit of reusing shape codes, meaning that, depending on the year, two completely different designs could bear the same number. Such was the case with this pipe, which was at least Stanwell’s second shape “01” (whether there was a more traditional “01” in the parallel Standards series from the 1940s-early 1950s is unclear) and was also the second shape “01” to have been designed by Sixten Ivarsson. Ivarsson’s first “01” shape for Stanwell was a Nefertiti rendition, while this one was closer to a pickaxe, or might even be considered an elephant’s foot. Both are fascinating shapes and both have long been out of production, living on instead in the countless artisan that Ivarsson and Stanwell have been honored with. As for the dating, the Nefertiti “01” featured in catalogs between the early 1950s and the 1960s; this pickaxe “01,” on the other hand, appeared very briefly during the mid-1970s, before disappearing from catalogs altogether in the decades that followed. As a quick side note, the “301″ shape code seen on this one also denotes the line and finish, i.e., Royal Briar smooth, designated by the “3” prefix. The shape itself is an “01.”

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original (slightly time-worn) bowl coating. Some minor scratches on the bowl.

Details:

Length: 5.2″ / 177.8mm

Bowl Width: 0.88 / 22.35mm

Bowl Depth: 1.55″ / 44.19mm

Weight: 1.5oz / 44g