Familiar with Mello Bowl pipes?

Never heard of it or seen them. But I did find a lot that's coming up in an auction soon.
I wonder if it's perhaps pipes that were made during and shortly after WW2 by KB&B, the makers of Kaywoodie, Medico and Yello Bole. During WW2, Mediterranean briar was hard to get and so they experimented with growing burls out on the West Coast. It wasn't quite as good, from what I read, so it may be that these found their way into this obscure brand. But that's just conjecture on my side.
Keep us posted if you find anything ! I'd love to find out.

Are they "Yellow Bole" pipes by any chance?

Good point !
I am now on a quest... I did find a pipe manufacturing company called "MelloPure", which seems to have made metal pipes with removable bowl and filter.

For more info, see this article
Perhaps they tried their hand at briar pipes and called them "Mello Bowl" ?
In any case, I also found an old reference to a Mello Bowl granulated briar, so perhaps the "scientific" process is to grind of briar of lesser quality and make a sort of compressed briar bowl with it ?? :crazy:
The hunt is on ;-)

Lawrence:

I don't think so. If you zoom in on the picture as much as you can, you can faintly see the marking "Mello" on the fourth one down in the left row.


The second one from the bottom on the right seems to have a faint logo on the stem, but I can't make it out.
:twisted:
But hey, I got some occupational therapy now

And they are out there... another one on the Bay of E
Writing is much clearer to read on that one. But no other markings that I can see.
PS: I left out the image tag since the image was so big. Thanks L. for fixing ;-)

Well

After several more hours of scouring the interweb, using a little crawler, all I was able to find were some more pictures and scans of 1940's newspapers and gazettes. Nothing about who made them :-(
All I can think is that they were a cheaper brand. If I had to venture on maker, I would probably put my money on Kaufman Brothers & Bondy, but I wouldn't bet a lot on it though.
Here's the items I found:

A 1945 ad listing actual Mellow Bole (note the difference in spelling)



March 1945 Niagara Falls Gazette
And then several other ads listing "Blended Briar" pipes either without brand name:



August 1946 edition of "The Billboard"


February 1947 ad...unknown magazine
Or with a brand name, in this case Balum, which is unknown to me as well.


The fact that these ads seem to be prevalent around the end of the world war, makes me think they are indeed some form of engineered wood briar pipes due to the shortage of actual Mediterranean briar during the war. Once the import of briar was restored, they went the way of chicory coffee and food stamps.
For now, that's as good as I'm going to be able to find out. It's a neat piece of history, but pretty obscure apparently. It might be worth it to a history buff.
Good luck
PS: Had to come back and make the pics bigger so they were readable. Sorry for the large size.