I'm a Seattle native, and of all the pipes I collect, Kirstens are what I smoke most often. I really hope at least some posters don't mind my long, rambling post.
Here's my Kirsten display, made from a 1930s wooden wall shelf with wires added to clip pipes and hold bowls. It took a few years to fill it all up; it originally held three pipes and ten bowls, but ended up with five pipes and nineteen bowls.
The logo was cut from a mid-00s Kirsten catalog. I cut one up for a logo, gave a few away, then realized I neglected to keep one, by which time the store had run out and wasn't making more! If anybody has one, I'd love to get hold of one.
Pipes are:
-- New black Esquire (medium full-bent) with gray stem, currently with a briar Dynasty-shape bowl.
-- New silver Mariner (medium quarter-bent) with brown stem, currently with a 1960s smooth meer Mandarin bowl.
-- Vintage antiqued "Heritage" brass-copper Lancer (medium straight) with black twin-bore stem, currently with MM cob bowl.
-- Vintage polished silver M (medium straight) with black stem, no O-rings, "pats. & pats. applied for," currently with a MM cob bowl.
-- Vintage antiqued "Heritage" silver Designer (large full-bent) with brown stem, with custom freehand plateau bowl; this was one of several made in the 70s or 80s for local big names in the tobacco world, in this case for Paul Reasoner, original owner of the now-closed Tukwila Tinder Box, my 'home' store for years (has his name etched on the side).
Extra bowls:
-- The cob bowls were featured on the 1969 Kirsten catalog. They were made for Kirsten by Missouri Meerschaum (who have no records of this, that they can find) for only that one year.
-- The meer bowls are not the modern Turkish-made ones the Kirsten shop sold, but vintage ones circa 1962. Gene Kirsten bought block from Turkey before the export ban and created them. I've got five, one smooth, the rest "staghorn" (a wormlike hand carving) and one with little stipples or dimples in the staghorn. The Kirsten shop still has many of these in stock for $30 each, and I threw together some shop display racks (see below.)
-- The Billard shapes are discontinued, they're down on the bottom along with a tiny 1950s Kaywoodie-made bowl (they have a few of those left, too!)
-- The rest are in every shape I know of: Mandarin, Dynasty (Mandarin with inward-sloped rim), Brandy, Columbus (like a Brandy with higher hips), Bulldog, and the discontinued Tulip and Tyrolean, in all manner of finishes. The two briars up top are a Tulip (L) and Tyrolean(R). Back right is a vintage hand-carved Mandarin, and front-and-center is an odd staghorn Mandarin dyed a mottled wine-purple with hints of metallic gold.
I also have a Kirsten cigar holder in silver. I'd really love to find a gold one, or some of the Kirsten cigarette holders, which came in silver and at least 4 anodized colors (I believe them to be gold, green, blue and red). Kirsten also made sets of corn-on-the-cob holders.
Though Kirsten pipes aren't currently in production, the owner is working, if a bit slowly, on getting it started up again. They made a megaton of parts, sold 'em for years, then when they began to run out, found out their trained machinists had retired. The company nearly shut down, and one family member grabbed it and took over running the downtown shop (the old one in Ballard shut after the rent got raised or something like that).
Being a regular customer, I was told they get people clamoring for Kirsten pipes, or even parts. And the shop has a bunch of bowls. But there's so little display space that they're stored in eggcrates, stacked inside two big boxes in the storage closet. If you don't see them and don't think to ask, you might never know they have 'em. I had a brainstorm and offered to throw together some display racks. These were made using wooden ceiling molding; the concave side fits against the rounded pillars of their display cases, and the two 'back' sides hold staggered rows of brass hooks, dipped in a liquid rubberizing solution so they don't scratch the bowls.
1960s meerschaum:
One of two racks of assorted modern and vintage briar, with two Kaywoodies at the bottom:
