The shank carries no maker\'s stamp, and none is worn smooth beneath the surface either - the mark, if it was ever there, simply is not present. What is here instead is the object itself: a smooth bent brandy in meerschaum, fitted with a red bakelite stem cut with a fishtail slot and bored for a 9mm filter.
This is an estate pipe - previously smoked, sold as such, with no maker or house name attached to it. The seller describes it plainly as a smooth bent brandy, meerschaum, with a red bakelite stem and fishtail mouthpiece, and that description is what stands here. Nothing about origin, factory, or date is claimed because nothing is known.
Meerschaum is worth explaining on its own terms, since the material carries most of the interest here. It is a soft, porous hydrous magnesium silicate, mined in block form and worked into a bowl and shank before any smoking ever touches it. Unlike briar, it has no grain to read under light - the surface is uniform, chalky white to pale ivory when new, and it is this porosity that makes meerschaum prized in the first place. The stone draws tars and oils up through its structure as it is smoked, and over time the bowl colors from the base upward, moving through gold and amber toward a deeper brown. That coloring cannot be rushed or faked convincingly; it is the one form of patina that is entirely a record of use. A pipe described as pre-smoked and in good condition, as this one is, has already begun that process, whatever stage it has reached.
The brandy shape takes its name and profile from the brandy snifter: a bowl that swells outward from a narrower base before curving back in toward the rim, mounted here on a bent shank and stem. It is a shape built for the hand as much as for smoking - the flare gives the palm something to rest against, and the bend brings the bit to the mouth without the smoker having to tip the head back. Bent brandies sit well in a rack and photograph well on a desk, which is part of why the shape has stayed popular across a great many makers and materials, meerschaum included.
The stem is bakelite, an early synthetic resin, cut with a fishtail bit - a mouthpiece where the slot widens and flattens toward the tip rather than staying a single round bore. A fishtail spreads the smoke stream slightly as it reaches the lips and is generally regarded as a comfortable, low-resistance cut for a filtered pipe.
Condition: the seller reports this pipe as pre-smoked and in good condition. No cracks, chips, or repairs are noted. Finish and grain: see the photographs.
THE MARKS
- No maker\'s stamp present; shank reads as blank or unreadable
THE MEASUREMENTS
- Length: 138.0mm (5.4\")
- Bowl height: 50.0mm (2.0\")
- Bowl width: 33.0mm (1.3\")
- Chamber diameter: 20.0mm (0.8\")
- Chamber depth: 45.0mm (1.8\")
- Weight: 36.0g
Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.
SKU: 256
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