Jobey

Jobey is a pipe brand that catered mainly to the North American market throughout the twentieth century, with its owner and manufacturer changing hands repeatedly. Today the name is most associated with two things: the screw-in "Jobey Link" fitting joining stem and shank, and its line of free-shaped pipes made in Denmark in the seventies. Because its early history is carried not by a tidy corporate archive but by scattered registration records and period publications, many points of the brand's past remain in dispute to this day.

The Origin Dispute

Pipe literature repeated for years that the brand was born in England around 1920 and later moved to the U.S. No document supporting this account has ever been produced, and it remains an unverified claim. The earliest trace that can be tied to a document is instead in the U.S.: Louis and Ulysse N. Jobey, living in Brooklyn, filed for a pipe design on 9 November 1914, and the design was registered as USD46998 on 23 February 1915. The same surname also appears in the management of another, separate pipe company incorporated in New Jersey, listed in a company directory from the twenties; as the account goes, Louis Jobey went bankrupt in the meantime, in 1918. These scattered records suggest the name may have been American from the start, but they are not enough to reach a firm conclusion; the matter is a typical example of the debate over how patent and registration records are read for dating.

A Name That Changed Hands

By one account, a 1941 trade magazine states that Norwalk Pipe Corporation made both Jobey and Shellmoor pipes; the article names Louis Jobey as head of the company. Over the following forty years the brand changed hands many times, at times separating maker from seller. Names appearing in records include George Yale Pipes & Tobacco and Norwalk Pipe Co. in New York, Arlington Briar Pipes Corp. in Brooklyn, Hollco International in 1969, and Weber Pipe Co. in Jersey City in the seventies; during these same years much of the distribution ran through the Tinder Box chain. The brand's market also stayed narrow throughout: it never went beyond North America and England, never catching on in continental Europe. Production continued mainly in classic shapes at a mass-manufacturing scale; within the community, Jobey is remembered less as a collector's item than as a sturdy pipe suited to everyday use.

The Jobey Link

The brand's most recognizable technical detail is the connecting piece joining stem and shank. The patent Brooklyn resident Peter V. Genna filed for on 25 February 1969, granted on 3 November 1970, is registered in the name of Wally Frank, Ltd. In this fitting a threaded connector is screwed into the shank's seat; the stem seats by friction onto that piece's smooth end. The aim is to reduce the thread wear and moisture seepage seen with tenons screwed directly into the shank. The "Jobey Link" stamp is therefore useful for dating: pipes carrying this fitting date from after 1969. Stamps mostly show a script "Jobey" name with a series name underneath, and on most examples a three-digit shape number as well; series names encountered on restored pipes include Shellmoor, Stromboli, Asti, and Sterling.

Jobey Dansk and the Later Period

While the brand was in Weber's hands, freehand pipes made at the workshop of Danish maker Karl Erik Ottendahl were offered under the name Jobey Dansk. Ottendahl was also producing for Wally Frank in these same years; this line became one of the routes carrying the Danish style, with its emphasis on the grain of briar, into the American market. According to the account, this line ended when Ottendahl stopped exporting to the U.S. in 1987. Secondary sources write that the Jobey name passed that same year to the Saint-Claude-based Butz-Choquin facility; since this is not supported by a primary document, the claim should be treated with caution. Production is reported to have stopped for a time, then the brand was relaunched in 2002 by F&K Cigar Co. of St. Louis, Missouri. Records indicate the name remains with the same company today.