BBB meets Barling at the fit in 1887
- Thread starter kenbarnes
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Hi Ken,
I've seen a number of these, all from the 1880's. Barling did the silver work for BBB before BBB set up its own operations. The Barling family had been in the silver smithing trade long before they became involved with pipes, and continued in that business as well as the pipe mounting and later pipe making business, long afterwards.
I've seen a number of these, all from the 1880's. Barling did the silver work for BBB before BBB set up its own operations. The Barling family had been in the silver smithing trade long before they became involved with pipes, and continued in that business as well as the pipe mounting and later pipe making business, long afterwards.
Right. By the 1890's BBB was producing their own silver work. All of the Barling silver work on BBB's I've seen is from the 1880's. A few years ago I looked at several BBB cased magnums from the 1880's, all with elaborate Barling silver work. Really gorgeous stuff. Wish I could have afforded to buy one, but I was set on buying a Barling set, and that blew the budget.
Exactly. Most of what Barling did in the 19th century was mounting bowls turned by others, initially meerschaums and later, briars. This was pretty standard for most of the British houses of the time. The best carvers were from St. Claude and Nuremberg and British pipe makers imported those bowls by the thousands, and hired French carvers to work in house and train British carvers. People forget that the French put briar on the map, and expanded into the British market, first with Loewe in 1856, and later with Comoy. I don't know when Barling started mounting briar bowls, but their expertise in mounting meerschaum bowls with exquisite silver work goes back to 1812, or more probably 1815 based on research done by Jon Guss.
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