James Upshall Tradition Magnum Plateaux Foot Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

James Upshall was, along with Ferndown and Ashton, part of a new wave of British hand-made, high-grade pipes in the late 20th century, with their founders largely coming from previous positions in the factories of companies such as Dunhill and Charatan. James Upshall was founded in 1978 by Barry Jones and Ken Barnes, both of whom had previously worked for Charatan and who had worked their way up to being carvers Charatan’s higher-end, non-standard shapes. Jones and Barnes’ pipes quickly grew to being something of a status symbol, and were enjoyed by King Hussein of Jordan, Anwar Sadat, Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Robert Wagner and Tom Selleck. Sadly, James Upshall pipes are no longer made, but their reputation as some of the finest, hand-turned British pipes lives on.

In the past, I’ve talked about how post-war Danish carvers, such as S. Bang, Kurt Balleby, and others, transformed the traditional brandy shape into something genuinely novel, while also creating something that looked far more like its ballooning, brandy glass namesake than the old Anglo-French factories ever achieved. And then you have something like this, which might as well be a staggering riposte to the Danes from one of England’s own freehand masters, Mr Barry Jones. While parallels can be drawn between the shaping of this pipe and Jones’s “cup and saucer” designs for Charatan, it is also arguably the closest to a genuine snifter that a briar pipe has ever been. It is also a genuine giant, being part of Upshall’s magnum Empire Series, wearing the Tradition finish shared with the workshop’s standard-size A grades. As a last touch, the pipe features a hand cut cumberland stem, which was far less common than vulcanite in James Upshall’s output, and was always sold at premium.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating. It also comes with its original leather sleeve.

 

Details:

Length: 9″ / 128.6mm

Bowl Width: 0.84 / 21.33mm

Bowl Depth: 1.85″ / 46.99mm

Weight: 4.7oz / 136g