Ashton

Ashton is a brand founded in London in 1983 that quickly earned a place among top-tier English briar pipes. Its founder, William Ashton-Taylor, learned the trade at the Alfred Dunhill factory and opened his own workshop in the early 1980s. The brand's founding years and its founder's story are covered in a separate entry; this account is devoted to product identity, finish names, and the stamping system.

Wood Selection and Oil Curing

One of the workshop's distinguishing choices is using different briar sources depending on the finish. Smooth surfaces use Calabrian briar, known for its hard, light structure; blasted bodies favor Tuscan briar, said to hold a dark patina once the soft grain is removed. Selecting the blocks was the founder's own personal task; he is said to have traveled to Italy's briar sawmills twice a year for this purpose.

What sets Ashton apart from comparable makers is its oil-curing process. Bowls fresh off the lathe are first heated for eight hours, then left to soak for eight hours in a mixture of three separate oils, and then fitted onto heated brass pins and left for fourteen days. The aim is for the oil driven back out of the wood by the heat of the pins to carry with it the sap and residue still left in the wood; according to the maker, the resulting pipes end up roughly twelve to fourteen percent lighter than comparable pipes. Records trace the origin of the method to a process described in 1915; Ashton-Taylor is said to have refined it through years of experimentation and to have taken out a British patent for his own version.

Finishes, Sizes, and Stamps

The brand's surface finishes are offered as named series:

• Pebble Grain: A dark, deep sandblast; considered the brand's best-known look.

• Old Church: The same blast left in a natural finish.

• Brindle: A series pairing a blasted body with a cumberland mouthpiece.

• Sovereign: A smooth, naturally colored finish; flawless-grain examples are further graded with the "SG" suffix.

• Claret (Gilt Edge): A smooth finish shading from claret to golden yellow.

• Oak: A dark-toned smooth finish.

• Achievement: Pipes featuring unusual work such as spirals or bamboo-style transitions.

By the 1980s, deep sandblasting had largely fallen out of favor in English production. Ashton's continued use of the technique is regarded as the chief factor behind the brand's rapid recognition. Common opinion in the community places the workshop's large, knotty surfaces in the same line as early Dunhill Shell examples. Size stamps run from small to large as X, XX, XXX, LX, and ELX; above these sits the Magnum series, which can only be cut from very large briar blocks.

Dating relies on the number following the "Made in England" mark. That number is 3 for 1983 and increases by one each year — in other words, adding the stamped digit to 1980 gives the year of production. The first year's pipes were stamped in plain block letters with "Made in London England" and carried no finish name. Records indicate only thirty-one pipes were made in 1983. Records also note that a batch sent to America in the mid-1990s was stamped without the year digit, on the grounds that the older date made the pipes harder to sell.

Mouthpieces and Current Status

Mouthpieces are hand-cut from rod stock. Vulcanite was used for a long time, and records indicate that in the early 1990s a material called Ashtonite was added; this is described as a blend positioned between vulcanite and acrylic, somewhat harder than ordinary vulcanite. Since the two materials continued to be used side by side, both types can be found on pipes from the same period. The workshop's out-of-specification bodies, meanwhile, are stamped as a separate series under the name Romford.

William Ashton-Taylor died on September 16, 2009, and production passed to Jimmy Craig, who had worked alongside him in his final years. Craig is said to hand-cut both the mouthpieces and the tenons from solid vulcanite, just as before. The brand continues today as a small-scale workshop, following the same curing and blasting regimen.