Help Identifying 1919 English Pipe - The 'F' Brand with Birmingham Silver Hallmarks

[MCJ]

Looking for any help in further identification of an English Bent Bulldog pipe I recently acquired and just got back from restoration. It's a really cool little pipe with (to me anyways) attractive angular lines in the shank. The pipe is stamped "The 'F' Brand" on the shank, and the silver collar is stamped W.R with no frame or outline (unknown sponsor's/maker's mark), plus Birmingham 1919 silver hallmarks (Anchor = Birmingham, Lion Passant = 92.5% silver purity, letter U = year 1919).

I saw an older thread where someone else had an 'F' Brand pipe, but that one had Glasgow silver hallmarks (not Birmingham) with M.F. (not W.R) sponsor's/maker's mark. It was opined that that pipe was likely sold by Montague Alexander Friedlander and Julia Friedlander who traded as A. Friedlander & Co in Glasgow and were listed as wholesale tobacconists and pipe mounters.

Based on different assay offices and different sponsor's/maker's marks, I'm guessing that the 'F' Brand pipes were made by a third party and then resold thru various tobacconists back in the day? Anyone else have an 'F' Brand pipe or a pipe marked with W.R sponsor's/maker's mark that might be able to help me further identify maker or reseller of my pipe?

 

[ashdigger]

I don’t know jackshit about your question or anything about “F pipes”

BUT that is a great looking pipe!!

 

[kcghost]

I got nothing. Your guess seems reasonable.

 

[RustiePyles CPG]

The lone (F) is usually Wally Frank. They were an American chain tobacconist and pipe importer. Wally Frank imported pipes from all over Europe, many of the Frank Pipes were made by Comoy, Sasieni, Oppenheimer. But 1919 is bit early for Wally Frank. A Lone (F) could also be A. Frankau & Co who were bought out by Oppenheimer in 1920. Frankau pipes were often mounted in Birmingham.

 

[greeneyes]

'Wm. Milligan Co." (Who Made That Pipe)

Matches nicely with your hallmarks.

 

[jguss]

As a side note the eponymous Wally Frank was born in 1920 and his business was started in the thirties, so we can safely eliminate a pre-pubescent Wally from the running.

The Milligan attribution offers a bit of a puzzle. WMTP is incredibly useful but not without flaws; there is the occasional error on the one hand, and more frustrating by far a complete lack of detailed sourcing that would enable the adventurous to retrace the authors' steps on the other. It would also be very useful to know when a given brand first appeared in and when it vanished from the trade listings. But these are quibbles compared to the overall usefulness of the book.

Still in this case it presents a problem. I'm pretty sure I know what primary sources the authors relied upon (annual fancy goods directories published by the trade and covering a good chunk of the last century), and in this case a quick check of those I have readily accessible shows that the F Brand belonged to A. Friedlander at least from 1921 until the outbreak of the first World War in 1939; there is some evidence they continued to sell pipes with the F Brand marking as late as the mid fifties. There is however an interesting exception, and that occurs in 1936.

As an example of the listing that appeared almost every year for several decades here's the entry from the 1921 edition:



And by comparison here is the lone exception, the F Brand listing from 1936:



The clue lies in a different part of the directory; the one that lists companies, not brands. Here is the Friedlander company listing from the same year:



Note that the address is identical. To me this naturally suggests that Wm Milligan was an employee or more likely a subsidiary of A. Friedlander, and that in future years a reorganization either dissolved this sub or moved brands around within the company. In any case it's clear that by whatever name Friedlander continued its ownership and commercialization of the F Brand pipe.

As additional evidence the relationship between Friedlander and the F Brand model goes back considerably further than 1921. As you mentioned in your post, elsewhere on this forum OzPiper has several times posted pictures of a 1902 stubby billiard he owns that is stamped F Brand and has a silver band with a Friedlander makers mark:



So I think it's pretty clear the brand always belonged to and was sold by A. Friedlander; the pipes, as was typical of the time, were almost certainly made for them by a manufacturer in France. To what degree A. Friedlander put a more or less trivial effort into finishing them after they arrived at their business is (to me) unknown.

For more on the Friedlanders see my post a few years back on this thread:

Friedlander & Co - Cased Pipe :: British Pipes

While mooching around fleabay, killing a bit of time, before putting the chickens to bed for the evening, I came across a listing that caught my eye. It had terrible pictures (2 of 'em) and a description that was not much of a description. The tarnished metal band, and the shape of the yellow...

pipesmagazine.com

As for the "WR" silversmith who made the band I can think of several candidates but that will have to wait until I'm back in NJ where I keep my books on hallmarks. I should say however that identifying hallmarks can be a dicey business. So many small players were involved over the centuries that not infrequently certainty ranges from elusive to impossible.

In any case yours is a beautiful pipe and I hope it brings you much pleasure.

Cheers,
Jon

 

[georged]

Board,

Please ignore this Jon guy ^^^^

He completely makes up everything as he types. 100% stream-of-consciousness nonsense, including the screenshots (which he sketches by hand in seconds). It's CONVINCING, though, which is the problem.

He's extremely wealthy, based in Kyrgystan, and been driving all kinds of agencies and companies crazy with this sort of thing for a long time. Confusing governments, messing with share prices, destrying banks, and so forth. Interpol has been after him for years.

Why pipes are on his list of thrills no one knows.

Ah... the Internet, eh?

 

[Sjmiller CPG]

“The F Brand” marking makes sense. Couldn’t make any smaller pipes if you had to stamp “The Friedlander Brand” on them.

 

[jguss]

Thanks for blowing my cover George. Luckily given the average age of forum members they'll have forgotten all about it in 20 minutes.

 

[georged]

Thanks for blowing my cover George. Luckily given the average age of forum members they'll have forgotten all about it in 20 minutes.

Yeah, so we only need one VCR movie and only one novel to read... So what? Everything has an upside if you look for it.

 

[MCJ]

Thanks to all for the information provided above so far (and to georged and jguss for the entertainment!)

Seems like it's A. Friedlander for sure. Still curious as to why my 'F' Brand pipe has Birmingham silver hallmarks, whereas the other 'F' Brand pipe I mentioned in my original post had Glasgow silver hallmarks. Glasgow makes sense, since A. Friedlander was based in that city; I'm assuming that their pipes (which seem to have been made abroad, likely in France) were just sent to whatever silversmith had capacity and/or offered the best price for finishing at the time? Unless A. Friedlander also had a Birmingham store presence in 1919? Look forward to hearing back after jguss returns to NJ if his hallmarks books might be able to identify the actual silversmith whose W.R sponsor's/maker's mark is on my pipe. That mark is not listed in any of the online records I've found...

 

[jguss]

Seems like it's A. Friedlander for sure. Still curious as to why my 'F' Brand pipe has Birmingham silver hallmarks, whereas the other 'F' Brand pipe I mentioned in my original post had Glasgow silver hallmarks. Glasgow makes sense, since A. Friedlander was based in that city; I'm assuming that their pipes (which seem to have been made abroad, likely in France) were just sent to whatever silversmith had capacity and/or offered the best price for finishing at the time?

It didn’t work that way. Mailing pipes was cumbersome, expensive, and risked damage; much cheaper to send only the silver bands which weighed almost nothing and were easily shipped in volume.

When the silversmiths were on the pipe manufacturer’s staff they would make the band and punch their mark (the “makers mark”, later called the “sponsors mark”) on it. The bands would be accumulated and shipped in bulk to the specific assay office at which the relevant makers mark was registered. It was common for larger players to register marks at multiple assay offices. Henry Comoy, for example, had marks registered at Birmingham and London; ditto Adolph Frankau (BBB); Auguste Dreyfus was registered at Birmingham, London and Chester; and Friedlander registered marks at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Chester. Many other cases could easily be cited. I presume this diversification mitigated manufacturing delays by allowing bands to be sent elsewhere for assaying if one office was closed or significantly backed up.

At any rate when the assay office received the bands they were tested for purity (this process is a whole other conversation) and if they passed stamps were added to each band representing the assay office location (the town mark), purity (the standard mark), and year of testing (the date letter). The batch was then sent back to the manufacturer who would affix them to pipes. If the business was near the assay office I imagine the bands might have been picked up rather than shipped.

In the case of independent silversmiths working on a piecemeal basis for the manufacturer I would guess it worked much the same way, although it’s possible the bands were shipped (or otherwise delivered) to the manufacturer first, who after inspection would send them on to the appropriate assay office. Presumably the smith got paid after the purity test results were in but I don’t really know.

So you see too much can be read into the town mark. I find the makers mark more interesting since not infrequently examination reveals relationships between specific silversmiths and pipe manufacturers.

 

[MCJ]

It didn’t work that way. Mailing pipes was cumbersome, expensive, and risked damage; much cheaper to send only the silver bands which weighed almost nothing and were easily shipped in volume.

When the silversmiths were on the pipe manufacturer’s staff they would make the band and punch their mark (the “makers mark”, later called the “sponsors mark”) on it. The bands would be accumulated and shipped in bulk to the specific assay office at which the relevant makers mark was registered. It was common for larger players to register marks at multiple assay offices. Henry Comoy, for example, had marks registered at Birmingham and London; ditto Adolph Frankau (BBB); Auguste Dreyfus was registered at Birmingham, London and Chester; and Friedlander registered marks at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Chester. Many other cases could easily be cited. I presume this diversification mitigated manufacturing delays by allowing bands to be sent elsewhere for assaying if one office was closed or significantly backed up.

At any rate when the assay office received the bands they were tested for purity (this process is a whole other conversation) and if they passed stamps were added to each band representing the assay office location (the town mark), purity (the standard mark), and year of testing (the date letter). The batch was then sent back to the manufacturer who would affix them to pipes. If the business was near the assay office I imagine the bands might have been picked up rather than shipped.

In the case of independent silversmiths working on a piecemeal basis for the manufacturer I would guess it worked much the same way, although it’s possible the bands were shipped (or otherwise delivered) to the manufacturer first, who after inspection would send them on to the appropriate assay office. Presumably the smith got paid after the purity test results were in but I don’t really know.

So you see too much can be read into the town mark. I find the makers mark more interesting since not infrequently examination reveals relationships between specific silversmiths and pipe manufacturers.

Fascinating read. I love learning all this information. Thank you so much for all your time on this! It is most sincerely appreciated...

 

[didimauw]

Oh don't ask me, I'm just a new guy, and don't know much about pipes. Im just here for the great pipe pictures.

 

[greeneyes]

Mine is a Friedlander from 1902 Glasgow.

 

[MCJ]

Mine is a Friedlander from 1902 Glasgow.
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Very nice!

 

[greeneyes]

Very nice!

Thanks. Is your nomenclature and stamping and so forth identical to mine? It'd be interesting to see if it was the same stamp.

 

[bullet08]

Fascinating. Never thought an old pipe identification could be this interesting. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[sablebrush52]

Still in this case it presents a problem. I'm pretty sure I know what primary sources the authors relied upon (annual fancy goods directories published by the trade and covering a good chunk of the last century), and in this case a quick check of those I have readily accessible shows that the F Brand belonged to A. Friedlander at least from 1921 until the outbreak of the first World War in 1939;

Aha! Jon has inadvertantly revealed his true origin, a spy from a parallel universe where the First World War did begin during 1939! His cover is blown, as is his associate George, a shape shifter from that same world, on a mission to destroy our planet.

 

[jguss]

Aha! Jon has inadvertantly revealed his true origin, a spy from a parallel universe where the First World War did begin during 1939! His cover is blown, as is his associate George, a shape shifter from that same world, on a mission to destroy our planet.

Let’s be honest, the so-called Great War was really just a warmup for the Allies vs Axis match. If we call the 1914 scuffle World War Zero, which most scholars now agree is the right nomenclature, that makes the fight against Adolf World War One.