Fader's

Fader's is an American tobacconist business that opened in Baltimore in 1891 and was run by the same family for many years. Though not a pipe factory running series production in its own workshop, it is counted among the typical examples of the US house-brand (house line) tradition through the eponymous pipe series it had other manufacturers make.

A Century as a Family Business

The founder of the shop, Abraham Fader, was born in Germany; it has often been recounted by later generations that he founded the business out of a need to make a living rather than any passion for tobacco. A small hand-rolled cigar workshop stood right next to the store. The great fire that consumed the center of Baltimore in 1904 destroyed both this workshop and the warehouse; though the city was rebuilt quickly, the manufacturing arm closed in the early 1920s in the face of the spread of machine-made cigars, and the business turned entirely to retail.

After Abraham Fader's death in 1934, the business passed to his son Ira B. Fader, who had trained in chemistry and joined the store on his return from World War I; the firm's name took the form A. Fader & Son in this period. When Ira died unexpectedly in Europe in 1959, management passed to the third generation, Bill Fader. Bill Fader remained at the head of the shop for decades and turned the business into a Baltimore chain by opening branch after branch; a second location in Towson, according to the record, opened in 1965.

Change of Hands

The 107-year-old business did not pass to a fourth generation: in 1998, at the height of the cigar boom, it was sold to a Baltimore-based cigar and tobacco retailer. According to the account, the buyer was a company called AFADCO, which after the sale merged with another investment partnership and simplified the trade name to Fader's. Bill Fader continued in the tobacco trade after the sale and held a role in the American tobacco retailers' professional association. When the cigar wave subsided in the early 2000s, most of the chain's stores were divided among different investors.

House Series

The store's eponymous pipes were never produced at its own bench; the stamp belonged to Fader's, the body to other workshops. Over the years the series that reached the market sometimes took their names from the shop itself: Fader's Calvert, from the flagship store on Calvert Street in downtown Baltimore, is the best-known example. Some series, meanwhile, were named directly for a surface or material feature: the rough-surfaced Fader's English Rough, Fader's M/L, whose bowl is said to be lined with African meerschaum, Fader's Naturals with unstained briar, and the filter-equipped Fader's Filter Pipe all belong to this group. Pipe listings also mention a model stamped simply "Fader" and a Fader's Tan Blast; these are said to have been made to order at the Shalom Pipe Factory in Israel and in Italy respectively, though these attributions are not backed by independent records.

Such stamps, as is often seen among briar brands forgotten over time, are understood to point to the retailer rather than the manufacturer. Because a tobacconist could shift its orders to different workshops over the years, two pipes carrying the same name may have come from entirely different hands, which makes dating house series difficult. It is recounted that the store employed a full-time pipemaker for a period, a tradition said to have ended in the early 1960s. Today the business stocks the pipes of many different manufacturers and no longer issues a new series under its own name.