GBD Line Names and Quality Grades

GBD line names are the line names stamped onto the shanks of the brand's pipes. In identifying a GBD, collectors look first at this name and only then at the shape number. Born from the partnership of Ganneval, Bondier, and Donninger, the brand used more than a hundred line names over its lifetime, and for most of them neither a complete production record nor a reliable date list survives.

The Documents Behind the List

The most comprehensive record on the subject is the line list Jerry Hanna compiled for Perardua.net, which Pipedia republished with permission. Hanna's material draws on three sources: correspondence that circulated on the alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup in the 1990s, Herb Wilczak and Tom Colwell's 1997 reference book Who Made That Pipe?, and Oppenheimer GBD catalogues from the 1970s and early 1980s that he later acquired. The compiler states openly that the record remains incomplete; many lines today are known only by name, with no record of their finish.

First Grade, Second Grade, and Private Brands

The lines fall roughly into three groups. Those carrying the GBD stamp are considered first grade, while those sold under the line name alone, without the brand logo, are considered second grade. A third group is what the catalogues gather under the heading "private brand": the body comes off the GBD bench, but the stamp carries the name of the tobacconist or chain that placed the order. This distinction is not as fixed as it appears. The same line is sometimes listed with the logo and sometimes without it in catalogues from different years; the line name alone is therefore not a reliable indicator of grade, and the grade cannot be pinned down without knowing the production year.

Grades and Recognized Lines

No official GBD quality scale is known. The order available is a list drawn up by a collector comparing the 1976-1980 catalogues, which places Pedigree, Straight Grain, Prodigy, and Bronze Velvet at the top, with Virgin, Varichrome, Prestige, Jubilee, and New Era just below. Virgin is remembered as the only GBD grade made for years with unfilled briar. Prestige and the deeply sandblasted Prehistoric line favored Perspex stems: black on the former, glass-like clear on the latter. In brand documents, the word Perspex refers to the acrylic stem material. Century's launch date is inconsistent across sources: one record gives 1950, another gives the 1960s or 1970s. Xtra is said not to have been made after the 1930s, while Seventy-Six is said to have been released in 1976 for the American bicentennial.

Finish Names, Size Codes, and Dating

In catalogue language, "take off" is the name given to a two-tone staining method: the stain darkens the softer texture of the grain while the harder grain stays light, sharpening the contrast between them. Granitan is the name for a surface that, after sandblasting, is partly sanded down to roughen like gravel, while Tapestry and Fantasy are the names for geometric areas masked off and left smooth before sandblasting. The general framework of these techniques is covered in the entry on surface finishes. The Iringa, Jenga, Kibo, and Nusi lines were not made from briar but from African meerschaum; the 1976 catalogue states that these were worked in Tanganyika. The region's sepiolite deposits, particularly the Amboseli basin, appear in mining records, and some of the names come directly from that geography: Iringa is a city in southern Tanzania, while Kibo is the highest cone of Kilimanjaro. Non-standard oversized pieces, from smallest to largest, were distinguished by the codes Conquest, Collector, and Colossus. In dating, the medallion on the stem is also a guide: the replacement of the inlaid metal medallion with a painted stamp points to production after the merger with Comoy's of London.