James Upshall B Grade Group 4 Smooth Lovat 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. The company also made house-brand pipes for Astleys in London. Sadly, James Upshall pipes are no longer made, but their reputation as some of the finest handmade British pipes lives on.

During the workshop’s lifetime, most of James Upshall’s pipes were either Tilsheads, or they were the “standard” grades of S, A, and P. But, if a pipe was extraordinarily well grained, it had a chance to become a “high-grade”—which, given the exceptional quality of Upshall’s standard output, meant the latter were pretty special. The Upshall “B” was one of these high-grades and, per Ken Barnes, was roughly equivalent to a Charatan Executive grade. As with another B grade we had a few weeks ago, this one appears to have been cut in a very interesting way. Ken Barnes used to talk about how his favorite method of approaching straight grain pipes was, in a way quite opposite to Charatan, to position a briar block so that the plateaux end would be at the base of the bowl. By turning the block “upside down,” the grain lines would not flare outward as they ran up the sides of the bowl (as they famously did on Charatan’s Dublin shapes), and would instead run in a more parallel fashion, with any flaring occurring nearer the pipe’s underside. Looking closely, that appears to be what’s happened here, too, to the same very striking effect.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating. The bowl coating itself looks to have been a little over-applied near the lip of the rim, but only slightly.

 

Details:

Length: 5″ / 127.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.72 / 18.28mm

Bowl Depth: 1.39″ / 35.30mm

Weight: 1.1oz / 32g