Mastercraft

Mastercraft is one of the pipe names that reached a wide audience in the mid-twentieth-century United States, though it was not a manufacturer in the usual sense. The brand was an import house that brought pipes made to order at factories in Europe and the Middle East to the American market under its own stamp, adding lighters, tobacco pouches, and similar accessories and distributing them wholesale. Its administration was based in New York for many years.

A Brand Without a Factory

Mastercraft had no bench and no carver of its own; every pipe bearing its name was the work of another workshop. According to the account, its stock included lines signed by Rossi, Brebbia, Santambrogio, GIGI, and the Rovera brothers from Italy, by Parker/Hardcastle and Orlik from England, and by Jeantet and Jima from France; meerschaum pipes from Austria's Strambach, a series made in Israel, Japanese lighters, and Hong Kong-made pouches also featured on the distribution list. This inventory rests on a single recollection and has not been cross-checked against independent trade records.

Such a structure means there could be serious differences in workmanship between two pipes bearing the same name. The clue is mostly in the stamp: the name "Mastercraft" set within a shield-shaped frame, alongside the phrase "Imported Briar" used for the briar, and often the country of production ("Italy," for instance). A silver-colored oval "MC" mark on the side of the mouthpiece and series names such as Executive Choice are also known traces; some examples bear the "Algerian Briar" stamp. The brand is said to have used Bing Crosby's face in magazine advertising; although this claim is widespread in pipe literature, it has not been confirmed against original advertising artwork.

The Move to Sparta

In the postwar period the brand was in the hands of Bernard Hochstein. United States Tobacco (UST), owner of the Skoal and Copenhagen brands, is reported to have bought Dr. Grabow from the Lavietes family in 1969, and Mastercraft from Hochstein in 1974. The new owner moved the New York operation to the town of Sparta in North Carolina, where Grabow had been producing since 1943, placing the two brands in the same building. During the move, finished stock was held for a time in a warehouse in Winston-Salem; it is said the stock occupied an unusually large space by the standards of the day.

One of the names Mastercraft had previously acquired was Marxman. Founded in New York by Robert "Bob" Marx, this brand is remembered for figural pipes with the faces of film actors carved into the bowl. The exact date of the transfer is uncertain; it is reported to have taken place in the years before the UST purchase.

Years Intertwined with Grabow

The two businesses brought under the same roof soon began feeding each other's product lines. Grabow reissued some of the shapes Mastercraft had imported under its own name, while Mastercraft, which often struggled to find steady supply, drew on Grabow's stable production. As a result, the same body could be sold under two brands, under a different name and with a different finish: the smooth-finished Seville found its counterpart in Grabow's rusticated Hillcrest, and the freehand line was called Andersen on one side and Grabow Freehand on the other. It is also reported that the use of lucite mouthpieces passed to Grabow via Mastercraft. In this period, the two brands' briar sourcing and finishing practices converged.

The seventies were the brand's most visible period; Mastercraft pipes appeared regularly in the major mail-order catalogs. It is said that in the late seventies UST set up a small sales team focused on pipe shops, and that sales declined once the team was disbanded. The brand is not in production today; its name is mostly associated with the estate market, with pipes whose maker is inferred from the stamp.

A significant portion of the details in this entry rest on the forum account of a person who managed Mastercraft and Grabow in the seventies and eighties; unless cross-checked against independent documents, this information should be regarded as single-sourced.