Charatan’s Make Supreme Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates [SOLD]

Description

While Dunhill may be Britain’s most famous pipe brand, Charatan is not only older, but has the honor of being the first to have made its pipes entirely in-house. ‘Charatan’s Make’ referred to the fact that, at a time when other pipe companies were sourcing stummels and stems carved from other companies before assembling them in their factories and workshops, Charatan made every part of their pipes on the Charatan premises. So began a legacy of high-quality pipe-making under the Charatan name, one whose employees, at one time or another, included Joel Sasieni, and Ken Barnes and Barry Jones of James Upshall fame.

As may be gathered by the name, Charatan’s Supreme pipes were some of the make’s higher-grade offerings. While I’ve categorized this as a freehand – both because it is and because it’s easier from the perspective of search algorithms – it would be a mistake to confuse the pipe for the freehand approach associated with Denmark. Charatan’s freehand carvers, whether Stan Haney, Ken Barnes, Barry Jones, or others, rarely strayed too far from traditional shaping conventions. Instead, they played with these conventions, accentuating, elongating, or juxtaposing design elements in a fashion that could be described as “neo-traditional.” This one blends the bowl of a billiard, the forward cant of a cutty, the shank of a foursquare, and the stem of a Lovat; not just because the carver felt like it, but because this extraordinary combination was a way to maximize the extraordinary grain patterns they’d discovered while turning the briar used. When a briar block gives you “angel hair” straight grain as nice as this, you’d better listen to whatever shape that briar wants to be.

The condition is great. There’s a little inner rim darkening and a few handling marks around the bowl, but this early Lane era (1961-65) Charatan has nonetheless been preserved remarkably.

 

Details:

Length: 7.2″ / 182.8mm

Bowl Width: 0.90 / 22.86mm

Bowl Depth: 1.65″ / 41.91mm

Weight: 2.3oz / 68g