Show Off Your Orlik Pipes Here

[jguss]

Hello jguss, thank you for joining in and supplying more info. I went over both pipes with a jewellers loupe looking for any traces of worn stamps, but found absolutely nothing.
Do any of your catalogues show either of these pipe shapes? I have found Cutties in many other makers ranges but not anything Orlik that I have been able to access. The same goes for the bent Dublin (if that is the correct name for the other pipe). The quality is not brilliant, but here are the other sides.

What I have is essentially the same as is shown in the link Ahi Ka posted above (except mine's in color). If you want to use your imagination the 100 & 184 Dublin models are reminiscent of one of your stummels, but without a stamp it's tough to be sure.

Or if you think the bent model mentioned by Ahi Ka a better comparison this is from the color shape catalog:

 

[Ahi Ka]

From what I can tell the last mention of Orlik producing the Special was 1941; not to say it wasn't made later, I think it clearly was, but that it doesn't appear in surviving catalogs or price lists after that time. Certainly it doesn't appear in the 1950 catalog (which I have); by then the Z model designation had been reassigned to the Archway (which previously had been designated series 4141). The page you got from Simon is actually from the 1933 catalog. Here's the same page from my copy; note not only the series letter but the price to the trade:

View attachment 282918

Don't place too much reliance on the presence or absence of a silver band. For at least some of the years the Special was produced the model was available with and without the silver band; catalog illustrations make this clear. Such bands were more popular in the earlier part of the 20th century and I doubt much in demand by the latter thirties and beyond.

The significant thing about your pipe is the print lettering of Special; all catalog illustrations (and surviving pipes with legible hallmarks) through the end of the thirties show the model name in cursive. I believe for that reason alone your pipe is post war and dates to a late and undocumented period in the production of the model. Not that the block lettering is particularly rare; if you want to find a great number of Specials with and without cursive writing search Worthpoint. It's just a factor to consider in dating the pipe.

The lack of other nomenclature is odd; are you sure there's nothing even faintly visible elsewhere on the pipe? Orlik placed great value on the London Made aspect of its pipes and this figured prominently in the stamping. Even where one part of the pipe said Made in England another part would be stamped London Made. I've seen this on various Specials before; here's one example:

View attachment 282923

This of course changed when the plant moved to Shoeburyness in 1974 and the England part remained true but the London part did not. And in any case with nomenclature there are always exceptions; even with the best QC department where humans are involved there is always room for errors of omission or commission.

I always find your input fascinating batman. That’s a great example of the cursive/serif Orlik font being used in the early 30s.

It has always puzzled me why the type face of the marquee stamping changed, even when they kept the logo somewhat the same. The exception being their flagship old bond street line.

I need to recant my earlier statement about having block Orlik stamped pipes without the London made COM, it seems i have reached an age where my memory tricks me. The two pipes I was thinking of do have the COM. You’ll recognise one of course. The same COM and Orlik stamping style are on my “X” stem coronas.



I think the churchwarden used to have a band on the shank, which allows for the funny connection lines. It doesn’t have a mode number, and it is the earliest example of the O stem logo I have come across, kind of looks like an oval too.

Another (clearer) example of the case logo



And for comparison, a Bruyere Antique from 1919. I find this pipe interesting as my examples from 1918 and 1917 have the series stamped in fancy serif style as opposed to block letters.

 

[jguss]

The company's nomenclature is eccentric but has a certain sense to it. Just to be clear I didn't mean to imply that the company changed its logo font within and across models erratically. In fact their practice seems to have been to use different logo script for different models. Based on images in the 1923 catalog, for example, about half the models were stamped Orlik in block print (this includes the Bruyere Antique, Dugout, Scoop, and De Luxe) while the remainder had Orlik stamped in script (this includes Ye Olde Briar, the Special, the Extra, and a line just stamped Orlik). And if this variation wasn't irritating enough the catalog shows all cases that year had labels affixed with Orlik in script regardless of the font used on the actual shank. Here's one example:



Over the next ten years the company's practice apparently shifted away from roughly half block and half cursive logos on shanks to a decided preference for the former. I think this was evinced not just in newly introduced models but existing ones where some of those that had previously used script (e.g. Ye Olde Briar) were eventually changed to block. By 1933 those models with the logo stamped in block included the Bruyere Antique, Dugout, Straight Grain, Sterling, Regent, Extra Dry, De Luxe, Corona, and Domino. Of those very few remaining models with the logo stamped in script was the Special.

 

[Ahi Ka]

 

[OzPiper]

Yup

 

[rEinSTATEd]

Thanks guys, lots of clues for the Dublin. The shapes 100 & 184 appear to have round shanks though ((I know its hard to be certain from a printed cat.), Whereas the 166 at least appears to have an oval shank, even if it isn't a bent. So, not as old as I thought? What date was the colour cat.please, jguss?
Still no clues to the history of the Cutty ? Yet!

 

[jguss]

What date was the colour cat.please, jguss?

It’s undated but based on internal evidence I believe it was issued in 1970-1971.

Still no clues to the history of the Cutty ? Yet!

SomethIng conclusive is unlikely to emerge. Virtually all the major English pipe manufacturers made hundreds of shapes over the many decades they were in business, and only a fraction of these found their way into catalogs. The specific shapes included in that fraction changed with what came into or went out of fashion. The cutty in particular is a shape of some antiquity whose heyday was in the 19th century; as a less popular shape in the 20th century it would have been unlikely to be publicized. There are other possibilities of course but in my view this is the Occam’s razor explanation for its absence from surviving catalogs and shape charts.

 

[jguss]

On a wholly different but not unrelated matter I can’t recall if I’ve ever posted a picture of Louis (born Alois) Orlik before. I have several, but this sketch is by far my favorite. It was published in a trade journal at the time of Orlik’s 80th birthday but actually created when he was 56. It therefore captures Orlik as he appeared in what was then more or less mid career: