Twarn't me Al. Offhand I forget who had that forum name, if I ever knew.
On the general topic of this pipe I have a ton of information about Wally Frank and his business and can add a little to this conversation. Wally Frank pipes are a hornet's nest; their name is attached to 181 models listed in the inestimable
Who Made That Pipe. Artistrocrats is not one of them; White Bar, however, is. Note in passing that the other manufacturer of a White Bar identified in
WMTP besides WF is L&H Stern, and the countries of origin for both makers are listed as the USA and England. Clearly Stern is USA, and at least some if not all of WF's White Bar pipes came from England.
With that broad hint it's easy enough to find proof that again some, if not all, of the Wally Frank White Bar pipes came from England, and more specifically are often stamped London. Here's a link to one sold by Chance Whittamore a while back that has shape number 235 stamped on it:
EXCELLENT! COMOY'S MADE WALLY FRANK FULL BENT AMERICAN ENGLISH Estate Pipe MINT | #4705220430 - https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/excellent-comoys-made-wally-frank-4705220430.
Note that shape 235 is listed as a kruger in at least one Comoy shape chart:
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And also note that any number of kruger/oom paul shape pipes stamped with 235 and made by Comoy under one of its many aliases can be readily found. Less persuasive of course, but still worth a glancing comment is that the white bar itself is reminiscent of the early bar utilized by Comoy on its Grand Slam.
So in sum, with all the usual caveats I think it's not unreasonable to suspect that a WF Aristrocrats is a dba for a White Bar and that the WF White Bar is frequently of Comoy manufacture.
As an aside I'll note that the pipe Chance sold said Wally Frank over London. It may be tempting to believe that referred not to the place of manufacture but to Wally Frank's purported London origins. The latter was a blatant lie; Frank was born in NYC and died in Connecticut, and his forbearers were all German on both sides of the family. Moreover the notion that WF had a London location was pure fiction, and meant to cash in on the cachet associated with English products. This entirely baseless London claim was made for the first four years WF was in business but eventually the Feds caught up with old Wally and the FTC slapped him down pretty hard. Other exaggerations so grotesque as to be outright falsehoods were called out too (e.g. that WF made its own pipes). The summary findings are relatively lengthy but the punchline is brief (see below). It is, as you'd expect, a cease-and-decease order. To Wally's discomfiture the proceedings were reported in contemporary trade journals and more embarrassing still in a few public newspapers:
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