Dunhill Tobacco Tins: Packaging and Dating

Dunhill tobacco tins are considered one of the sturdiest foundations for dating in English pipe-tobacco collecting. Even though a blend's name stayed the same for decades, the size of the tin, the shape of the lid, the base stamp, and the royal-warrant wording on the label were renewed at set intervals; the period of a tin is largely established by reading these four details together. The first study to lay out the criteria in an organized way is John C. Loring's 1997 review. For the history of the blends themselves, see Dunhill Pipe Tobaccos: 1907-1990.

The Shape and Size of the Tin

Records indicate the earliest tins were not vacuum-sealed; a photograph dated to 1909 shows half-pound and one-pound tins under two closely related "My Mixture" labels. During the First World War, the switch was made to the knife-lid (cutter-top) tin. The distinguishing feature of this design is its double lid: a thin metal inner lid seals the tobacco airtight, and the outer lid that fits over the body has a small sliding knife at its edge for cutting the seal. Once the seal is cut, the outer lid serves only as a cover. This arrangement, well suited to long-term storage and overseas shipping, is credited with playing a part in the brand's spread. The most common size was four ounces; eight- and two-ounce tins were also made, with pressed flake blends usually going into the two-ounce size.

In the examples Loring studied, the four-ounce tin from the 1920s through the 1950s measures roughly four inches in diameter and two inches in height; a few blends used a narrower, taller tin. At the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s the metal thinned, the diameter dropped to 3.75 inches, and the outer lid took on a bright gold colour with a pronounced curl at its lower edge. Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1960s, the packaging changed fundamentally: the paper-labelled knife-lid tin was replaced by a painted, coin-twist-capped tin. The transition was gradual; the 1968/69 wholesale catalogue lists the two types side by side.

Label and Base Stamp

The paper label wrapping the body was printed separately for each blend, while the outer lid was fastened to the body with a paper band bearing Alfred Dunhill's signature, often along with a facsimile of a red seal. With the move to the coin-twist cap this seal disappeared, and the "My Mixture" label gained the long-tailed "dunhill" script. On the limited-distribution "My Mixture" tins the label is uniform, with the blend number written by hand on a side label. The address section on early examples shows telephone and telegraph details; once the New York and Paris branches opened in the 1920s, branch addresses filled this space.

The base stamp is a separate clue: tins from the 1940s and 1950s carry only the wording "MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN," and a weight stamp was first struck on the four-ounce tin only in the 1960s. In the 1970s, as part of adapting to the common market, the stamp switched from ounces to a paired ounces-and-grams format, and by the end of the decade the four-ounce tin had become a 100-gram tin.

The Timeline of the Warrant Wording

The royal-warrant wording alone also gives a rough date range:

• The warrant obtained from Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1921 appears on the labels of some blends in the 1927 catalogue; it was never added to the label of the blend called Prince of Wales.

• The warrant lapsed with the 1936 abdication, and records indicate that by 1938 a new warrant obtained from George VI brought wording for a king onto the label.

• Tins from the Second World War years also carry a "wartime packaging" mark.

• After the war the warrant moved from the side label to the top label.

• Following the king's death in 1952, direct reference to the sovereign was dropped, a few years later the wording "the late king" was adopted, and this was used into the early 1960s.

• With the coin-twist cap, the wording was renewed for the queen, and by the early 1990s it was removed from the label altogether.

The Manufacturer Wording

When blending was outsourced at the end of the 1970s, the label's "blended by Alfred Dunhill" wording disappeared, replaced by forms noting only the country of production. The identity of the manufacturer that took over the work is not certain; the two names most often cited are Murray, Sons & Co., founded in Belfast in 1810 and folded into Carreras and later Rothmans International after 1953, and McConnell. After the warrant fell away, the wording first became forms meaning "under licence from Alfred Dunhill Ltd.," and around 1994, "in association with Dunhill Tobacco of London." The blends' course after this date is covered in the entry Dunhill Tobacco Blends.