Dunhill Bamboo Bruyere

[kenbarnes]

Does anyone know when the first Dunhill Bamboo pipes were made. I have just unpacked another lot of pipes from yesteryear and have an unsmoked 41312 Bruyere with a bamboo section dated 1979. I have a few of these Dunhills (from the factory) and I am wondering if this was a prototype which came out years later. If anyone has any ideas, I can attach photos.

 

[huntertrw]

Dear Mr. Barnes:
I have a contact at Alfred Dunhill Ltd., and have relayed your question. Upon receipt of the answer I will post it here.

 

[pitchfork]

I've seen ones from much earlier than 1979 (Shell, though, not Bruyere).
Here's one from 1952:
http://www.apassionforpipes.com/dunhill-collection/

 

[kenbarnes]

Ah, thankyou huntertrw and to you too, pitchfork. I just could not find anything on any dating/shape etc sites.

Great stuff- such a pool of knowledge on this forum

 

[fishingandpipes]

I was reading an article somewhere recently which I assuredly will never find again that seemed to indicate the Whangee (bamboo shank pipe) was made in Dunhill during WWII due to a briar shortage, or some such. Less briar used if you don't need a shank on the thing.
I wonder if that's true.

 

[kenbarnes]

Thanks fishingandpipes, that's could well be true. I know that Alfred Dunhill gave his wood supplier (Otto Braun) a £25,000 advance in 1945 in order to start up the saw mills again because he had, literally, no briar at all. I also saw a world war 11 Peterson clay pipe on ebay the other day, which they resorted to using due to the briar shortage. Just thinking about it, I could possibly get four Dunhills (group 2 or 3) with short shanks out of one piece of plateau briar! Hopefully all will be revealed when huntertrw's Dunhill contact gets back to him.

 

[huntertrw]

kenbarnes:
According to archive research conducted in London by my contact at Alfred Dunhill Ltd. the earliest reference he found to what could be termed production-model bamboo-shanked pipes was in a catalog dated 1950. As to any earlier manufacture he stated, "I cannot exclude that we might have made a few Bamboo pipes even prior to the year 1950, however, as they were not featured in the older catalogues I would confidently state that from 1950 onwards we did manufacture Bamboo stemmed pipes in larger quantities."
I hope that this information is helpful to you.

 

[kenbarnes]

Thanks very much huntertrw. This is most interesting as I want to learn much more about the types of new lines that Dunhill produced in the last century. I do have one or two ex-factory Dunhill 'proto types' from the Dunhill-Charatan takeover period of 1977-1978 which I find fascinating. 'How to create value from a beautifully grained piece with a flaw in the shank'.