Another aquisition

About the only other pipe I collect other than Peterson's are Willmer's, especially his pipes from the early times. This one came in today from Mel Feldman.

It is 6" long and 2 1/4" high and weighs in at just 2.2 oz.

I'd call it a belled dublin.

Henry Willmer was a tier one carver for Charatan's Make before he left to start his own company in 1970. His early pipes, like this one, show the Charatan's Make influence. I have 14 of them and they are excellant smokers.

He did alot of work for shops like Tinderbox, Iwan Reis and Astley. In the early days he had only four grades, AAA, AA, A and AB. Even the AB pipes were about 90% straight grains. The grain you see one this one is consistant all the way around. Sometime in the mid '80s he reorganised and stopped selling to shops. The AAA became AAAA Presention, the AA became AAA and so on.

When he first started, he was selling his pipes for much less that his compitition, Dunhill and Charatan. After the reorganisation, he increased his prices to reflect the quality of the pipes and his customers, being used to the lower prices, bolted. He went out of business in 2006. Chuck Levy of Iwan Reis tried to buy them but they were a hard sell according to Mr. Levy and the deal fell apart.

In my opinion, they are the best kept secret in pipedom.

Bob, the pipe rest is mine. I have three of them. They are ceramic with old sailing ships painted on them. They are quite nice.
I need to get off my backside and photograph them.

Pipemaker, about as close as I can come is 1970 to 1982. I've put the first bowl of 5110 thru it and it is a very good smoker. Only two re-lights and only because I let it go out.

I bought them from Gary Malmberg, The Second Hand Smoker on e-Bay about five or six years ago. I've not seen anymore like them.

Here are all three: