Every so often, an internal issue captures the attention of all pipe hobbyists and demands thoughtful analysis and commands many column inches of copy. Issues such as that provide satisfaction to me because I stay far away from them.
No, what brings me to the fore is rumor and gossip...the stuff fueled by insinuation and innuendo of a quality that would make old Senator Joe McCarthy proud.We are lucky to have just such a topic hitting the market, in the guise of a story in Pipes & Tobaccos magazine. We are talking about the article on Dunhill, which has a number of hobby veterans annoyed, their claim being this is purely a puff piece.
Yes, it is a puff piece, but isn't everything that Pipes & Tobaccos publishes a puff piece? I haven't seen a single pipe maker labeled mediocre and over priced. We old timers have seen this before, when Bruce Spencer
published a magazine that avoided any whiff of honest criticism in its aim to promote the hobby to sell more magazines. Correspondent Regis McCafferty (who writes and collects money from Pipes & Tobaccos as have
I) notices this unenlightened self-interest about the magazine and it's hard to disagree with his assessment.
Much of the criticism of the Dunhill article centers on credibility. The Dunhill spokesman alleges only 5% of the briar they buy, specifically dedicated to produce Dunhills, makes it into a pipe and the rest is burned. Why would they have such a difficult time buying wood that is as worthy as everyone else's briar? Nobody throws that much briar away, including the most
exclusive, high grade pipe makers. Plus, if the Dunhill briar is so much better than the Parker & Charatan briar, as he claimed (foolishly, I should think) why not use it for those pipes if it is already on hand and superior? It makes no sense at all.
What is credible is the statement that Dunhill's Stephen Wilson made to P&T writer Stephen Ross, saying that "I can tell you that the same quality standards in place in 1969 are still in place today." Sadly, according to Bill
Ashton Taylor in a conversation we had in England a few years ago, Dunhill's quality standards nose-dived in 1968 when they went to using an 8 pipe frasing machine and ceased their oil-curing process. I think Bill Taylor had a good handle on how Dunhill operated. He worked there for 25 years. I personally question the statement that "all White Spot (notice the absence of the word 'Dunhill' the craven dogs) pipe bowls are turned at the factory in north London."
Bjarne Nielsen told me, point blank, that Dunhill came to him during the RTDA and asked him to sell them bowls. Bjarne explained to Dunhill that the only bowls he could possibly make available to them was inferior briar
because he used all the good pieces. According to Bjarne, and I did not misunderstand or mis-hear any of this, the Dunhill people said they did not care. Now, as far as I am concerned, after years of close observation
(Bjarne stayed at our home for a number of years during his annual pipe-sellng trip to Northern California) Bjarne was incapable of fabricating such a story. Furthermore, he requested that I not repeat the story, which I did not while he was alive. He's dead now and I feel no obligation to keep quiet. You, of course, are fully licensed to believe who and what you want.
I also have heard information, directly from the owner of a pipe factory in France, that they make pipes for Dunhill and have for years. But, when it comes down to taking the stand and raising my right hand, it has to be
acknowledged that I am dealing in second hand information. I have no first hand information with which to finger that Dunhill article as a pack of prevarication. It is, as suggested above, a bunch of innuendo and insinuation, a low form of communication in which I excel...as do so many other people, many of whom, unlike me, call themselves public informants.
I'm sure that I don't need to tell you that whatever it is you want to believe, that is what is true.
