I realize this forum is frequented by accomplished lovers of artisan and higher end production pipes, abd the conventional wisdom is that all briars taste about the same, if broken in.
Lee didn’t believe that, nor do I.
Lee thought he made the finest pipes on earth, and so do I, during the twenty five years or so Lee was in operation.
Kaywoodie, not Dunhill, was the huge operation that ruled higher end pipe making in America, and a $5 Pre War Super Grain or $10 Flame Grain is fabulous, and such production pipes won’t ever be made again. That’s not to say they smoke better, but the beauty of the grain selected before the war at Kaywoodie for $5 and $10 pipes is and I think will always be unmatched. They were making millions of pipes a year from $1 sub brands to $10 Flame Grains, and buying 200 year old briar roots the size of old console color televisions,
During the war, you’ll see a full page advertisement, illustrated by the finest graphic artists of the era, in all the nationally distributed glossy magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, and others similar. Kaywoodie was an enormous operation.
After the war, instead of a return to the depression this nation prospered as never before, but with increased inflation. $500 new Chevrolets in 1940 were $1,500 in the late forties.
An old friend related to me how in 1938 his father helped other farmers for a dollar a day, but when he graduated high school in 1948 he was paid a dollar anhour as a teenaged kid to build a brand new golf course.
My father and many other farmers were amazed that after the war, a new pickup jumped in price from $500 to $1,500, but you could load enough cattle on one to pay for it with one trip to the sale barn.
And those boys returning home smoked, as many as 90% during the war, but they smoked Camels, Chesterfields, and Luckies.
It was in this time, in 1946, that little advertisements for Lee Star Grade pipes appeared in newspapers and periodicals.
A Lee pipe was a direct patent infringement on a Kaywoodie Syncro Stem, but with two definite improvements. The Kaywoodie used an aluminum fitment on the back of the shank, with a polished ring showing, to accept the screw thread. Lee used an insert that does not show a silver ring. It appears like a push stem. Also Lee screwed and did not push the screw into the stem, so a Lee can be resynchronized. The second and more important improvement was Lee made the Kaywoodie ball stinger, into a removable insert and each Lee seems to have a different pattern of rings, half balls, pointed spires, just a myriad of different ways they were turned on miniature lathes. I think Lee sold his pipes as “Limited Editions” based on the different types of stingers.
I remove the stinger from all Lee pipes I buy, and put them away. Any one will fit any Lee pipe.
The other two things Lee did, was that he somehow found a way to oil cure his briar to where they smoke wonderfully from the first bowl. A lot of makers tried to do that, and Lee succeeded. Try one and see. They taste better, from the first smoke. You’ll become a believer that somehow, it’s possible to mass produce better tasting pipes.
Lee advertised a $3.50 One Star for a few months in 1946 and then they disappear.
The second thing Lee did, was that if you compare a $5 Lee Two Star to a $5 Kaywoodie Super Grain, both new in the same postwar era, the Lee is a better looking piece of briar, with better construction. It’s flawless.
With almost any other article, doubling the price of a luxury item from $5 to $10 means you’ll sell a whole lot more of the cheaper ones. Not with Lee pipes.
Maybe all the two stars were burned up years ago, but today on eBay the most common Lee pipe sold is a three star grade, and by a large margin.
As the years passed and inflation bit harder, Lee decreased the number of points from 7 to 5 on the brass inlaid stars, then just stamped stars with gold foil, then dropped the synchrostem and went to all push steps. The price increased to five dollars a star. By the early seventies it seems Lee folded.
There are no collector clubs of Lee pipes, no books or histories as there are for Kaywoodie.
Unlike E A Carey, Lee never pictured himself or even had any hyperbole in his ads about his company or the features of his pipes, but he did say they were the finest pipes on earth.
Because, they just were.