Old Dunhill vs. New Dunhill: The Briar, Sandblast, and Mouthpiece Debate

The comparison between old Dunhill and new Dunhill is one of the longest-running debates in briar pipe collecting. The claim's essence is simple: pipes bearing early stamps are said to have been made of better wood, and later generations are said not to have reached the same level. The classic text on the subject is the comparison collector and dealer R.D. Field published in Pipe Smoker magazine in the fall of 1983; rather than simply relaying the community's received wisdom, Field addresses the subject by laying out what actually changed in production and when. Over the more than four decades since, the debate hasn't closed.

The Collector's Three Periods

Collectors divide production roughly into three periods. Pipes with a patent number on the shank are considered the "patent era"; records show this practice began in 1905, ended in 1954, and patent numbers weren't used on pipes made after 1955. The second period runs 1955-1968, the third from 1968 onward. On the secondary (estate) market, interest in patent-era examples has always exceeded that shown toward the other two periods. That stamps carry this much weight also explains why detailed Dunhill dating guides have grown into a literature of their own.

The Shift in Briar Sources

In the early period, a separate briar source was set aside for each finish: Italian wood was used for smooth-finish Bruyere and Root, Algerian wood for the sandblasted Shell, Sardinian wood for Tanshell. It's reported that the roots worked averaged sixty to a hundred years of age.

This arrangement broke down in the 1960s. Wood from Algeria became scarce after the country's war of independence (1954-1962); records from the same years also mention that Italy reserved its own briar for domestic manufacturers. The practice of setting aside a single source for one finish thus came to an end, and the firm shifted its emphasis to Greek briar. The new wood was harder, lighter, and more evenly grained; the burls, however, were small and flawed, so wastage rose.

Sandblast and Mouthpiece

The most visible result of the change shows up in the Shell finish, introduced in 1917. The loose texture of Algerian wood, combined with the heat of the firm's oil-curing method, produced deep pits and sharp ridges on the surface. It's reported that in the early years, bodies turned to identical measurements could diverge from one another so much by the end of the process that these pipes weren't even stamped with a shape number. The hardness of Greek wood shallowed the sandblasting; in exchange, bodies coming from the same shape became consistent with one another.

A similar trajectory can be seen on the mouthpiece side as well. Hand-cutting is preferred over factory mold-casting: a piece cut from an ebonite sheet or rod is shaped, and the tenon end is thinned one at a time to fit the shank. The main detail that changed is lip thickness. The thick lip of the earliest examples was thinned and widened in the "comfy" shape in the 1920s, and the "fishtail" was added to this in the 1930s. When labor costs brought machine cutting onto the agenda in 1976, a thick lip reappeared as a result; complaints that followed led to machine cutting being abandoned.

Decline, or Divergence?

Two decisions made about the finishes in the mid-1970s also feed the debate: the Shell was darkened entirely with a bluish-black stain, while the Bruyere was lightened from its original plum tone. It's reported that the Bruyere was returned to its old tone shortly after, and that the darker Shell experiment wasn't well received either; in later years a deeply sandblasted Shell line was reintroduced. Field's assessment is that all these steps were part of a continuous evolution rather than a decline in quality: Dunhill arrived at a different pipe while keeping its own standard. That the debate is still alive confirms as much. The age of the wood, the depth of the sandblast, and the thickness of the lip can each be measured separately; "a sweeter smoke," because it can't be measured, remains a matter of opinion.