Ashton 1986 Pebble Grain XXX Dublin Estate Briar Pipe, English Estates

Description

Ashton is an English pipe brand created by William Ashton Taylor, a former Dunhill pipe-maker who left Dunhill in the 1980s to make pipes under his own name. Along with other pipe-makers such as Ken Barnes and Barry Jones of James Upshall and Les Wood of Ferndown, Ashton emerged as part of a new wave of high end, hand made British pipes in the late 20th century.

The “Pebble Grain” was Bill Taylor’s answer to Dunhill’s Shell Briar. This would already be easily deduced from its craggy, dark burgundy sandblast, but there’s another connection that brought the two finishes together. Like the early Dunhill Shell Briar, Ashton pipes were, before being finished, oil cured using a patented method of Taylor’s own invention. This is in part how Taylor was able to achieve his signature deep, ring grain sandblasts, with the other part being plain old skill. This stout Dublin, made under Taylor’s watch just three years after Ashton’s founding, is a prime example of what that combination of ingenuity and know-how could achieve.

The condition is fair. Rim darkening and some residual oxidation on the pipe’s Ashtonite (a proprietary hard rubber compound similar to ebonite and another Taylor invention) stem.

 

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.91 / 23.11mm

Bowl Depth: 1.76″ / 44.70mm

Weight: 1.7oz / 50g