Interesting Completed Ebay Auctions - British Pipes
- Thread starter ssjones
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I meant applied the Perfeccion cap and made the case to fit.
Or:
Based on the ad copy above, their bent pipe came in a fitted case. I wonder if some industrious owner decided his premium Comoy's pipe would be a better home for the tamper and it just happened to fit the Perfeccion case?
Excellent work.
I found another mention of the Perfeccion Pipe in an advertisement in the February 11, 1909 issue of the Chicago Tribune. With these clues and thanks entirely to the work of greeneyes and jaingorenard I was able to winnow the tens of thousands of tobacco pipe-related patents down to a few hundred. The punchline is this: the dates and locations of the two verified references strongly suggest that the relevant patent was awarded to Edward Charles Berriman (1860-1925), a cigar manufacturer who was born in Oswego, New York and made his career in Chicago. I should also add that none of the images accompanying the other patents I examined looked substantially like the device attached to the Comoy's Prima in the eBay listing.
Here is the original US patent:
Berriman applied for a patent in Great Britain a few weeks after he applied in the United States (Dec 31 vs Dec 10 1908) but actually was granted the patent in Britain first (May 6 1909 vs June 29 in the US). Clearly the UK bureaucrats were more on their game than their American cousins. I have a copy of the Berriman UK patent for the insatiably curious but it is almost the same as the US version.
I forgot to add the clincher: the business mentioned in the 1909 ad, National Cigar Store, was controlled by Berriman Brothers, the companied owned by Edward Charles Berriman and his brother Matthew W Berriman.
Al, now that we know where the device came from I think we're in a position to offer reasonable conjectures about the answers to your questions.
If you look closely at the National Cigar Store ad you can make out the Comoy's on the pipe in the illustration. This tells us that Berriman's store was importing Comoy's at the time his patent was applied for, and that he therefore had a relationship with the manufacturer at that time. British law required hallmarks on anything claiming to be sterling that was meant for domestic (i.e. UK) sale. That's why the assay offices existed. Given the absence of obvious hallmarks (yes, they could be hidden under the grunge on the interior of the cap; but other motor domes, like Barling's, show the hallmarks on the exterior rim) one of two things has to be true: either the silver device was made by Comoy for export, which would therefore be exempt from the hallmark requirement, or the device was made elsewhere and attached after the pipe left the factory, in this scenario presumably at Berriman's shop.
On balance I think it unlikely, but not impossible, that the silverwork was made by Comoy. It seems clear to me that the Perfeccion Pipe was a niche product made for Berriman in his dual roles as inventor and retailer. The number of mentions which have survived are vanishingly rare, and all traceable to the American midwest. It wouldn't surprise me if Berriman's was the sole store to jump on this particular bandwagon. Certainly pipes with this device do not appear in the circa 1911 Comoy catalog which has survived. I suspect that Comoy treated this like any other special order for a shop; they produced cases of the required dimensions and with the requisite stamping, popped a Prima into them, and shipped them off to the City of Broad Shoulders. Once in Chicago Berriman could have inserted one of his patented gadgets, made locally, before sale to a less-than-eager public. But while a bit less likely it could have worked the other way; the device could have been made by Comoy inhouse for attachment to pipes and export to Berriman's shop. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
This was the era of bling. All of the major players had wind caps, whether domed or flat. Wouldn't do to set fire to the yacht.
Not me; I just scrolled down in the link @jguss posted and could access a digitalised copy. Maybe as I'm based in the UK (which would be strange, usually it's the other way round!).
Just to note, there's very little else in that document relating to tobacco, and this is the only advert relating to pipes. I wonder if this mechanism was marketed quite heavily towards the sailing and yachting community.
What an amazing find these recent posts have turned out to be. Reading this has been a great start to my day. It would certainly make an interesting entry into Pipedia.
Don’t know about this clunky thing but windscreens absolutely were. Barling’s Motor dome was named as such because it provided protection from flying embers while driving the open automobiles of that era, and their literature also mentions yachting.
And for me the Barling motor dome exudes Edwardian style - I can absolutely picture someone motoring along with one (however poorly it would have functioned in reality).
The above contraption... Less so.
Perhaps Berriman is chucklng somewhere over us and this discussion. He probably binned 100's that didn't sell and was bitter to the very end.
Actually Edward Charles Berriman abbreviated his name to Chuck Berry and went onto a second, more highly lucrative career. If you could rock like him would you really waste your time selling pipes?
I own two of them and rarely smoke them because the damned dome makes the pipe smoke hotter. That said, they are splendid to look at.