Reiss-Premier Co.

Reiss-Premier Co. is one of the companies that shaped American pipe manufacturing in the first half of the twentieth century. Formed in Chicago from the merger of two established firms, Reiss Brothers and the Premier Briar Pipe Company, it soon became known less for the pipes it made itself than for the brands and patents it owned. Today the company's name is chiefly remembered as a link in the history of Kaywoodie.

The Chicago Years

The name behind the merger was Jacob D. Burger. Sources diverge on the founding date: compilations drawing on trade press of the period place the merger in early 1920, while the pipe literature also widely cites 1922. Either way, the company began operating out of a rented industrial floor in downtown Chicago, in a period when demand for briar pipes was rising fast in the postwar American market.

The idea that kept the brand afloat was not a pipe model but an internal mechanism. In 1926 the company registered the term "Drinkless," a name describing a component meant to keep moisture accumulating in the chamber from reaching the stem and then the mouth. In August of that same year, Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy, considered America's oldest pipe house with a history reaching back to 1851, was bought out. This brought a well-established brand and a new patent under the same roof, and within the following year the Drinkless mechanism became standard equipment on Kaywoodie pipes.

The Move to New Jersey and Corporate Transformation

By 1928 production had moved to the industrial belt along the Hudson in northern New Jersey; sources disagree on exactly which municipality the move went to. In the same period the company is reported to have taken out a patent for cigarette and cigar holders and to have expanded its production floor by moving into a musical-instrument factory building. Though the details are debated, the direction is clear: a small merger had, within a decade, become a manufacturer doing business on a national scale.

The corporate structure was renewed, by the records, in the summer of 1940; the Chicago-based Reiss-Premier Pipe Company gave way to the Reiss-Premier Corporation, founded in New York. The pursuit of innovation continued after that as well. The "Synchro Stem," said to have been registered by the company in 1947, ensured that the stem and body locked into the same alignment every time they were joined; this solution remained the best-known technical detail of Kaywoodie pipes for decades.

The S. M. Frank Period

In March 1955 the Reiss-Premier Corporation was bought out by S. M. Frank & Co. In the same transaction Kaywoodie and Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy also changed hands, gathering a large share of the American pipe industry under a single roof. The Reiss-Premier name did not stand out as an independent manufacturer after that, though its corporate existence was preserved in New York state records.

The legacy the company left behind lies less in the aesthetics of the pipes it made than in the mechanisms it developed. Drinkless and the Synchro Stem were decisive in establishing an emphasis on "engineering" within American serial-production pipes, an approach that can also be traced in the marketing language of sister brands such as Yello-Bole.