A $28 WDC Giant Wellington

[Briar Lee]

The seller listed this as Italian, and it might be stamped Italian Briar. It was $18 plus $10 shipping and taxes to the dad blasted gubbermint.

But this is a WDC Giant Wellington (9 1/2” -10”) with a Nickel Plated collar, likely of French (Algerian) briar, and it looks in nice shape.



This will make my third Giant Wellington.



I’m sort of like my old Grandma “Mammy” Adams, she’d buy something nice and tell my mother if she didn’t like it after she was gone, it ought to sell good at the sale.

Wellingtons came in sizes as small as 25 cents before WW1 and 50 cents afterward. It was an ingenious design where the collar fit over the shank so the vulcanite stems could be molded and there was little if any hand fitting done to make one.

The largest size was nearly ten inches long, real monsters made of fine Algerian briar with sterling silver or nickel plated collars and embossed stems early on.



If there was an illustration in a pipe book what color Algerian briar turns, this would be the photo. If that’s Italian they did a wonderful job staining it to look Algerian.


Most of the biggest size ones likely were gifts for the man who had everything but a Giant curved pipe.

 

[upnorth1]

I picked one of these up for $20 Canadian in an antique shop a couple of weeks ago. The chamber is huge!

 

[xrundog]

Based on my experience with old pipes, I’m pretty sure Italian Briar was a 1920s stamp succeeding French Briar and preceding Algerian Briar.

 

[georged]

Pics or it didn't happen

 

[huntertrw]

Briar Lee:

Undoubtedly you've noticed that your WDC Wellington bears an uncanny resemblance to Peterson's System pipes. Charles Peterson first patented his "System" in 1890. The WDC Wellington appeared circa 1915. Why Peterson did not cheerfully sue Demuth for patent infringement is simply beyond me, but apparently no action was ever taken. Would it have been difficult and/or expensive then for Peterson, domiciled in Ireland, to sue Demuth, domiciled in the United States?

 

[upnorth1]

Pics or it didn't happen

 

[FurCoat]

I have the CPF Chesterfield version.

 

[FurCoat]

This is a WDC Jumbo. Same bowl size as the giant but a regular size stem

 

[FurCoat]

One of my first estates, a WDC Wellington

 

[Briar Lee]

Briar Lee:

Undoubtedly you've noticed that your WDC Wellington bears an uncanny resemblance to Peterson's System pipes. Charles Peterson first patented his "System" in 1890. The WDC Wellington appeared circa 1915. Why Peterson did not cheerfully sue Demuth for patent infringement is simply beyond me, but apparently no action was ever taken. Would it have been difficult and/or expensive then for Peterson, domiciled in Ireland, to sue Demuth, domiciled in the United States?

In 1977 when I got my first Giant Wellington another kid in the dorm named Lon Oberman was excited about it and compared it with his Petersons.

Here’s what I remember after almost a half century.

Wellington was a shape, like an Oom Paul or Cavalier or Bulldog. Others made Wellington shaped pipes:



Peterson of course could not patent a Wellington shape. The classic bent System Pipe is close to a Wellington but so is this Full Bent I bought close to an Oom Paul, but it’s not.



So what did Peterson’s patent cover?

A chamber drilled under the airway to catch water. The WDC Wellington is close, but instead it’s a condensation chamber that has a cylinder extending up the stem to the ring, which Pete’s didn’t have rings.

A tapered bore in the stem. WDC has that cylinder then it’s a straight bore.

A P lip to direct smoke up and not towards the tongue. Look close and the WDC button has a straight bore. You can run a pipe cleaner through it easier. It’s close, but not the same.

But the real reason was an 1890 patent at that time would have expired in 1907, the first year of the WDC Wellington. Wellingtons are in the widely reprinted 1908 Sears catalog.

—-
A U.S. patent issued in 1890 would have lasted 17 years from the date of grant. This is because the law in effect at that time provided for a 17-year term for utility patents, measured from the date the patent was issued
—-

Oberman argued that the WDC was a significantly improved System Pipe, because it was able to be nearly entirely machine made, including a real vulcanite but moulded stem.

But of course it wasn’t made in Ireland, which there the cool factor was all for the Pete!

Nobody ever held up a WDC Wellington in a seventies dorm room singing along with My Little Armalite and drinking Irish Whiskey.

 

[FurCoat]

This is my favorite WDC that I have. It's a Finest Quality with a Redmonal stem.

 

[Waning Embers]

Seems they have a .9"x1.83" chamber. Got interested with the word "giant" but the chamber is smaller than my smallest pipe.

 

[Sig]

A few years ago our local "junk" shop had one of these huge Wellingtons in their case that holds the "good stuff".
They were asking $25 and I have regretted not buying it. It was in decent shape but obviously hadn't been used in decades. The bowl was very dull with the typical old pipe buildup, and the stem needed a good refurb. The thing that made me pause was the stem wasn't bent as much as it should have been. The stem looked like the original, but it was almost like a Churchwarden. The stem had about 1/2 the bend of the ones pictured in this thread. I'm not sure if that was a model choice or something was a miss.
At $25 I could have easily enough bent the Vulcanite stem to my liking. I really regret not buying it, I love large bowled pipes.

 

[telescopes]

I had one for years but finally sold it. I never enjoyed it to be honest. It was clumsy to hold, the balance was off, and it was a poor substitute for a churchwarden. To be honest, it is really a duffus of a pipe in my opinion. But to each their own.

 

[Briar Lee]

My first WDC Giant Wellington was brand new, but the owner hid it from his wife below a washing machine in a cabinet, then died, and she kept on laundering gas station attendant uniforms for maybe ten years before she sold the gas station to the young couple I bought the pipe from in 1977.

It was soaked with crusted laundry detergent. It took a while, but the soapy taste is gone.

Basically it’s an American Peterson, made of decent Italian or Greek briar and sandblasted. A good pipe.

The second one came with factory varnish and a straightened out stem. I bent the stem and stripped the varnish and it’s a magical sap filled Algerian briar super pipe, with a few fills. It’s outrageously good, and coloring past oxblood to black.




As the little boy says everybody’s got an opinion but the folks that don’t like old Algerian briar never had none of it yet.

I will grant most modern day smokers would prefer the lighter tasting Italian briar, same as they do light beer and filter cigarretes.

Algerian briar is an addiction.

But I’ve got no reasons to quit.

 

[Briar Lee]

JACKPOT!!!!


A full ten inch, ancient , oil cured, aged over a century, unstained, unvarnished, and unpainted flawless, mostly straight grain French Briar, still fresh but oxblood colored, made in a socialist type pipe cooperative!

This is one of the finest pipes I’ve ever seen, period. The briar block this was made from was enormous, and they cut it from the heart or near about. The finish is perfect, no stain or anything used to polish it out.

This pipe was dirty on the outside but nearly unused, maybe a dozen smokes at most.

It smokes like a dream, beyond dynamite, the best of the best.

 

[runscott]

'Wellington' was a line of pipes put out by WDC. They came in all stummel shapes and sizes, various collar designs, various stem designs, various tenon designs. From my experience they seem to be a little better quality than other briar WDC's. Here are two of mine, up against ads that advertised them:

 

[runscott]

Inspired by this thread, I just got these two out and cleaned them up:

Top - WDC Jumbo with orific stem, original gold lettering.
Bottom - CPF Chesterfield with plip stem, stamped 'John's Pipe Shop Los Angeles'. This one has a larger stummel than any WDC Jumbos I've owned, and stummel/stem bend is less acute.

 

[Briar Lee]

I found my Baby Wellington yesterday.




The littlest ones cost from 25 cents up depending on the year, during about a 70 year run.

This one was Algerian briar, but varnished and with an aluminum or pot metal collar.

They weren’t toy pipes or novelties. The chamber is about the size of all the other “dollar” pipes except this one was a lot cheaper than a dollar and made of really good Algerian briar, and will easily fit a shirt pocket.