Pics of minimal import - Aerosphere / Kaywoodie / Briarcraft

For those who can't get enough of the carb system pipes...
Doing the weekly maintenance on the pipes. Nice time to show a few features in better detail...
The pipes:

three of the Briarcraft "Wimbledon". This is the pipe that was listed as a Comoy's on Ebay. Didn't pay Comoy's price for it. It is (I assume) a circa 1950's pipe. Really nice shape, a bit of normal wear and somebody chewed the stem a bit, but I can live with it. Smokes well, so that is the best feature it has.



Next two are the Duncan Hill Aerosphere, and the funky stem. Those familiar with Carey Magic Inch pipes will see some similarities. You can also see the carb fitting poking through the stem.


And, a last couple of the Kaywoodie Carb fittings...

I have never had the Kaywoodie clog. The holes are about needle sized. Too small to pass a toothpick.
James...
The pipe, according to what research i have been able to accomplish, is a Briarcraft. The Smokemaster pipes, which were Briarcraft built, were "system" pipes that utilized a pipe cleaner as a filter, and had a stem to accommodate them. This pipe has a standard style stem. Here is a blown up picture from the link you provided which I also read when I was trying to figure this thing out....

this pipe does not have the tube, or a place for one.
Also, the pipe is not stamped "Smokemaster", which (at least according to this picture) would be normal. Nor is it stamped with any other maker markings, or other (such as the L.L Bean)
http://www.otcpipes.com/briarcraft.html
the above pics also show the filter tube for Smokemaster pipes.
now, this shows the correct Diamond logo for the Wimbledon line, also produced by Briarcraft:
http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-w2.html#wimbledonbriarcraft.
And this is the diamond style on this pipe. The white diamond.
Now, as Grabow bought the Smokemaster system rights in mid 1967, and this is not a Smokemaster pipe, but an actual Briarcraft "second", and Briarcraft went out of business in 1950 or so, I can only assume that this pipe falls in that general realm of Briarcraft produced pipes from many moons ago.
Of course, I could be full of crap and this pipe rolled off the factory line sometime last month.

More, maybe better, pics of the pipe in question...
this, although the flash obscures it a bit, is the Wimbledon stamp, with "490" stamped below it. The stamping is quite good and very legible.

This would be the "Imported Briar" stamp, also quite good and legible.

And finally, the stem and bowl, which are pretty standard stuff. No tubes, filters or system type fittings.

However, we do know it is not a Comoy's.
It was "sold" as a Comoy's "Wimbledon", which does exist as a model. But none of the markings or nomenclature match anything Comoy's that I could find, and I did look extensively to be sure. And it definitely does not match anything to a Comoy's Wimbledon pipe.
I contacted the seller about it, and he was apologetic and offered a refund. But I didn't "buy a Comoy's", so i wasn't worried about it, as long as the pipe was in reasonable shape for the price.

I am hoping the pipe to be "old". Late 1940's or whatever. It is not "for sale", in terms of me trying to resell it as a collectors item or whatever. But, one of the things I really enjoy about pipe smoking is the history of it, and I am especially fond of the era of pipe smoking that encompasses WWII through the early 1960's. If this pipe is from that era, it makes it special to me for that reason. To me, and my imagination, pipes smoking, and especially the advertising of that time, embodies the calm masculinity of Post World War Two Americana. The Greatest Generation. I like being in touch with that, even if vicariously.

a 1967 Kaywoodie Carb pipe ad...

check out the entire line of pipe ads for sale. I may get one some day for fun...
http://www.vintageadsandstuff.com/adspipes.html