Zack,
Great looking pipe; I'm excited to see what you do with it. And with an unusually obscure pedigree!
For what it's worth I'm skeptical that the silverwork is by Kirwan & Co. The key photo is much too blurry (even on the original eBay listing) for me to really see the details of the hallmarks, but I believe the seller's assumption is off. If you're really interested about Kirwan I can tell you a fair bit about its founder, John William Kirwan (~1844-1919), and his business. But as far as I can find out despite a background as a jeweler/silversmith/goldsmith, Kirwan was never involved in the tobacco trade. Moreover his shops and his hallmark registries were in Birmingham and London, not Chester.
I think a much better candidate is Charles Maxwell Kinnear (b. Edinburgh 1872, d. Liverpool 1939), who's involvement in the tobacco trade was a) documented, b) encompassing exactly the right time period (all his hallmarks were registered in 1901-1902), and c) at the right place (his hallmarks were registered in Chester). See: http://www.silvercollection.it/DICTIONARYTOBACCONISTK.html.
The Wikipedia entry for Kinnear's father (a famous architect; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kinnear) states that his son Charles became a tobacco manufacturer, and this was clearly true for at least 14 years. As a young man in 1891 the census lists him as apprenticed to his maternal uncle, an "american produce merchant". What exactly that means is unclear. But by 1896 Kinnear pops up in Manchester trading as Leon Marcus & Co, a cigarette and tobacco manufacturer. He bought the business about that time from its founders, Leon Marcus Sogolowitch (1860-1919; a man who was a travelling salesman in the cigar and cigarette business both before and after his brief foray as a manufacturer), and Joseph V Lester. By 1900 Kinnear had relocated to Liverpool and was doing business under his own name as Kinnear Ltd at 49-57 Park Lane West.
About a decade later Kinnear left the tobacco business to enter into partnership in an enterprise called Dorn, Harding & Co, effective January 1, 1911. They were rubber brokers and merchants. This evidently failed since by the end of that same year the partnership was dissolved. What happened to Kinnear over the next 28 years before dying outside Liverpool at the age of 66 in 1939 is unknown to me.
Jon
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