Ten years on, I can make a high grade pipe (whatever that is).
So.
One normative definition offered to me years back was this: No one knows exactly what a high grade pipe is or isn't, but if you are making 400 dollar pipes and there's a line up, you are making high grade pipes.
I think what this actually means is that as you go up the price chain, you find fewer buyers, and presumably more knowledgeable ones. A guy buying his first 85 dollar rusticated Peterson is not going to hold the pipe to the same standards that someone looking to maybe drop 600 bucks on a pipe is going to hold that pipe to.
What we start to see is perfection of finish, perfection of line and proportion. And in a sense, by the time a carver is capable of this stuff, he/she is actually mostly performing it and is pretty well known in whatever circles.
I'll post a few pics of my own pipes and point out a few flaws and perfections.
Here's a real decent billiard. Nice briar, the bowl is shaped well, slight taper in the shank yadda yadda. The stem is ... okay but not super super perfect, a little wobble in the shaping here and there. So that's not an uber grade pipe even if it's a pretty good solid handmade. But no "newbie" maker could make that pipe, period.
Here's a pipe with no wobble in the shaping, and perfect grain to boot.
It's "better". Might be a high grade billiard even.
Take a pipe like this, a much more difficult shape, tough curves, tough drilling, it all has to work... and add perfect wood into it... yeah here's a high grade pipe.
A whole bunch of tiny perfections, every angle, every line, every everything - therefore a highgrade pipe of some sort, whether it's a billiard or a blowfish - the same standards apply.
FWIW I think there's a lot of mediocre pipes being passed off as high grades, and at the same time, I think the bar has been raised - where 10 years ago a "great" sandblast was an Ashton, now I don't think they even move the needle, because a bunch of guys are doing better in their own shops. Layton, Alden, King... buncha dudes.
So, is a Dunhill a high grade pipe? Yeah. They kind of defined that market. They have prestige and swagger, even if EACH and EVERY pipe isn't maybe quite as good as it should be, there are still any number of examples that are excellent. Castello same thing in their own weird Italian way. I think lots of Castellos probably don't count as great examples of high grade pipe making, but the best ones surely do. And I think the same of my own work.