Baron Old French Briar by K.F.S.

[Briar Lee]

$17.50 delivered on eBay

It reads MADE BY K.F.S.

Pipedia doesn’t have any entry on KFS I can find.

Whoever marketed it trusted a buyer would be impressed by that fact.

Anybody know?

Ain’t the grain purty?

View attachment 198379View attachment 198380

 

[anotherbob]

I like it. Certainly looks like a work pipe. But a nice work pipe. Even with the number of clearly present fills the grain is still nice enough to shrug those off. Also like the stain.

 

[Briar Lee]

I like it. Certainly looks like a work pipe. But a nice work pipe. Even with the number of clearly present fills the grain is still nice enough to shrug those off. Also like the stain.

I smell the Wally Frank catalog.

I only have a very few pipes with extremely dark stained briar that color.

Old French briar was advertised by WDC for years as superior.

Baron is a grade, most likely, like Golden Duke or Crown Duke. There might have been a Sovereign, Prince, or Royal.

There was an American pipe maker with the initials K.F.S. who was ashamed of his foreign (German?) sounding name.

So he had a stamp made up

OLD FRENCH BRIAR
MADE BY K.F.S. (Karl Fredrick Siegfried ?)


He had cursive stamps for second grades with fills, such as Baron.

Maybe someone else has a K.F.S. who can help solve the mystery?

That was intended to be a top shelf pipe, but needed fills. Note the web between bowl and shank. Hand turned?

 

[anotherbob]

There was an American pipe maker with the initials K.F.S. who was ashamed of his foreign (German?) sounding name.

So he had a stamp made up

OLD FRENCH BRIAR
MADE BY K.F.S. (Karl Fredrick Siegfried ?)

I would venture a guess that it would be less ashamed of and more worried it might be a liability as far as sales go.

 

[Briar Lee]

I would venture a guess that it would be less ashamed of and more worried it might be a liability as far as sales go.

Exactly. Since it was spelled briar and not buyere it was likely after WW2.

Even Kauffman Bros. and Bondy used KB&B.

——
Ludwig Stern, a successful pipe manufacturer since 1893 and closing around 1960, reorganized his company along with his brother Hugo Stern, opening a factory in 1911. They named the company L&H Stern Smoking Pipes & Holders. The newly formed company was moved into a six story building on the corner of Pearl and Waters street Brooklyn, NY.
—-


Later Sterncrests were marketed as LHS.

But K.F.S. represented something the maker was proud enough of to have stamps made, but didn’t want to use the actual full name of.

 

[anotherbob]

people are funny. We'll always react to things that really all logic indicates shouldn't matter.