Dunhill Needs Restoring

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
That's not a pipe for smoking. It is a work of art. Don't touch it. It's like one of those old ghost freighter ships that lurks into the harbor in the fog with every conceivable repair and scar covering its hull and superstructure, inconceivably afloat in a history and world of troubles, with no crew visible on deck. Who would go aboard such a ship for pay? Don't ask. You don't want to know.
 

georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
Unless this was Judge Crater's pipe. Then a forensic analysis of the stem, shank and bowl could solve that mystery once and for all.

Careful...

Tammany Hall may be gone in name, but the, um, interested parties are still looking out for themselves.

There are bridges over the Hudson, you know.
 
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jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,567
27,068
Carmel Valley, CA
I like George's musings on its possible history. I was visioning a gypsy rummaging through dustbins in St. James' and finding a discard in bad shape, and finding ways to make it worse.

Has it been carbon dated? :)
 
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kenbarnes

Can't Leave
Nov 12, 2015
441
374
I wonder if they got free shipping.
£4.10 postage was extra. I did want to buy it but forgot to bid at the end of the auction. The seller wrote "Needs restoring". I think the sectioned shank was carried out at Dunhill & the plugged bottom of the bowl too (On guarentee?) They stamped it again overlapping the join so it blended in. I think that when the bowl split due to carbon build up, he may have tried to get Dunhill to repair it again and may have received a 'B***** Off' from them.... enough is enough .... 'Sling your hook'. I am suggesting that the band around the bowl with the filler is not Dunhill workmanship and was carried out elsewhere. :)
 

georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
I think your take is spot on. The shank splice is definitely Dunhill's work (original nomenclature ground off & re-stamped), and the bottom plug almost certainly, too. Once the bowl popped, though, Dunhill likely bailed and improvisation took over.

I'd love to send a time-traveling fly-on-the-wall back to the day it was returned to Dunhill for that last time, in pieces yet again. Would have sounded like something of a Monty Python skit amongst the workers, I imagine.

Adding another layer of odd is how even after all that, when the pipe finally died for good, it still wasn't binned. Someone kept it in a drawer or trunk for decades.

My favorite storyline:

The pipe was a gift from some man's wife or sweetheart who unexpectedly died, and was the only object the man had left because her possessions were all lost in the house fire that took her.

But he was a laborer who worked outdoors, sometimes in harsh conditions, and despite his best efforts the wind and various fumblings and accidents kept diminishing his treasure. To NOT smoke it, though, was unthinkable. That would be surrender.

So back to Dunhill it kept going, and when they'd had enough a local repairman did his best, and after many years the man himself finally passed away.

The pipe, when found decades later, was in a tattered silk bag with a hand written note, "From my Emma".

The eBay scrounger who came across it, though, wasn't a sentimental sort and only saw a couple pounds, so the bag and note were thrown away without a thought.

Then, against astronomical odds, along came Ken.

And here we are.
 
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