1987 Robert L Marx Freehand Commemoratives

[Cloozoe]

Marx made many pipes that simply didn’t follow any rules regarding standardized shape and marked them commercially as such with words such as Benchmade and jumbo. He had a line that followed the standard shapes as well, but somewhere decided to let the carvers have at it. This was elk before the Danes. Free hand is not a term used to describe method as much as adherence to standard shapes. I am not sure why that would be considered absurd?

Do you really believe, even stipulating your definition of "freehand", that nobody before 1937 ever just had at it and carved something that significantly diverged from the standard shapes of the time? I don't. You don't "invent" something like that (did I mention I invented deep breathing?) although you can be the first to market it; I doubt that took place in 1937, either, though.

To OP: I'm not disparaging the pipes or their historical interest. I just got a chuckle out of the notion that something so obvious, all of a sudden, like in a vacuum, with no prior influences or moves in that direction, invented--in 1937-- "the freehand pipe", regardless of how it's defined.

' Scope: let's agree to disagree; didn't mean to offend.

 

[telescopes]

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' Scope: let's agree to disagree; didn't mean to offend.

Bob Marx was a marketing genius and a true pipe lover. He is credited with inventing the Pipe Smoking Contest as well. What Bob did was to market his pipes in a manner that was and is a salesmen‘s dream. He took cheap briar and turned it into pipes that sold well above his competitors and offered a lifetime guarantee, one still honored by Van. He ended his career as a senior salesman and vice president with Master Craft. An interesting man whom people who knew him always spoke positively, at age 75 he won the Mr. Senior Atlas competition. One can disagree with Bob’s claims, but few in the pipe world have his resume.

 

[Briar Lee]

@Briar Lee , I ran into a seller at the Las Vegas Pipe Show who had a suitcase full of The Four Hundred Pipes. Surprisingly, not all of them were giants. I think my Royal might have actually been a failed Four Hundred attempt. It looks like my 400 but only smaller.

Some speculation about the name origin of 400.

It’s 1937, there’s a recession within a depression going on.

400 $25 pipes would fetch $10,000 retail, or $213,000 today. He ordered 400 gold bands at 25 cents each, $100, from his supplier.
His best carvers likely earned about $25 a week.

There was some kind of bonus paid to a carver who produced a 400. $5 would have been a good day’s pay.

Marx already had a huge stash of briar, vulcanite, and the carvers were all on the clock.

And Marx got the “halo” effect of selling the world’s most expensive factory pipe.

The 400 series was the first freehand.

If I’m not mistaken a Royal was usually the highest $10 D size of the machine fraised Super Briar.

The 14K gold filled bands would have been maybe a nickel or dime.

I think the secret is somewhere in the bore size.

Were all the briar blocks Marx had were likely plateaux,,,had to have the rough exterior? A Drinkless advertised they were all plateaux.

In any event the biggest ones have .880”, there’s a bunch of big ones with .850”, and this A size Benchmade is still .775”




Whatever else, we know Marx made pipes from sponge soft Algerian briar that colors very easily.



They all smoke so well, simply because he used a large bore size and the most absorbent, heat dissipating, soft briar he could buy well seasoned and aged blocks.

 

[Briar Lee]

More speculation.

Not everybody was poor and struggling in the late Depression. The $5 Benchmade, or Jumbo, was probably about what well to do wives and mothers gave men for Christmas or a birthday.

$5 in 1937 was about $155 today. Not a fortune, for a rugged outdoor man of action!.

And the things color while you smoke em’

A good Heerman Oak saddle and a Marxman pipe are the only two luxury goods I know of that get prettier the more they get used.