Two Early Dunhills: the 'DAMAGED' Stamp and the Equal-Length DUNHILL/LONDON Line

Two Early Dunhills is the title of one of the short pieces John C. Loring wrote on Dunhill stamps. The piece records the stamps on two small Bruyere pipes carrying the brand's reddish smooth-polish finish: one a size-31 billiard dated 1921, the other a size-53 three-quarter bent body. What makes these pipes worth mentioning is not their bodies but two unusual stamps struck on them; one bears witness to how the firm disposed of flawed bodies, the other to just how fine a detail dating can rest on.

The Equal-Length DUNHILL/LONDON Line

What sets the size-53 body apart is the arrangement of the shank lettering. In the usual layout, the longer "DUNHILL" line sits above a shorter, centered "LONDON"; on this pipe, however, the two lines are struck at equal length, exactly one above the other. Sources dealing with stamp typology agree that this form came into use in the last months of 1918, but differ on how long it lasted. Loring narrows the window to between 20 October 1918 and 2 January 1919, that is, about two and a half months; common dating guides, by contrast, say the same layout remained in use until mid-May 1919, when the stamp was finally recut. For comparison, see the Dunhill Patent Stamps and Dating entry.

That a window this narrow can be known at all is remarkable in itself, since most of the firm's early records were destroyed when its London shop was bombed in 1941; the war years' effect on the brand is covered in the Dunhill in the Second World War entry. What survives is secondary documentation; the most frequently cited is a small card that shop staff kept on hand in the early 1920s for dating pipes from the previous decade.

The "DAMAGED" Stamp and Fallings

The full set of period Dunhill stamps appears on both sides of the size-31 billiard's shank; below the shank, however, the word "DAMAGED" and a reduced price have also been struck. According to the account, this price was considerably below the ordinary retail level of the same years.

The stamp is explained by a change in production. Until 1920 the firm bought most of its bodies from France, already roughly turned and graded, doing only the final work in London; from that date it began working the block itself from start to finish. The result was a pile of bodies that were usable but did not meet the firm's standard. In Dunhill terminology, these are called "fallings." The Parker Pipe Co., founded in 1922, was created for exactly this purpose — to put these bodies on the market under a separate name while protecting the "Dunhill" lettering. The billiard in question is a record of the interim period before that solution was found: the flaw was not hidden but announced with a stamp. It is reported that the flaw generally amounted to nothing more than surface issues such as sand pits, without any fill. That the pipe carries the British patent stamp indicates the piece was intended for the London shop rather than for export.

On the "Group 3" Label

Both bodies are small and are counted as "group 3" in collector terminology. Since group numbers first appeared in stamps in 1951, using such a size label for pipes this old is a retroactive approximation. How these numbers are read today is covered in the Dunhill Shape Numbers (Shapes List) entry, and the brand's general history in the Dunhill (White Spot) entry.