Sasieni

Sasieni is a British pipe house founded in London in 1919, known for the blue dots individually set into its stem. Founder Joel Sasieni — whose name also appears in some records as Joseph — trained at the Charatan bench and rose to management at the Dunhill factory. The sixty years the family remained in charge (1919-1979) are regarded today as the classic era of the English factory pipe.

The Oven Patent and Culling

The real invention that made it possible for Sasieni to start his own business was a drying apparatus: the patent registered in 1919 concerned oven-curing briar bowls. According to period documents, each bowl and shank was kept in the oven for six weeks, taken out periodically to wipe away surface moisture and checked for cracks. This method, compressing the years-long open-air curing process into weeks, also underpinned the young firm's rapid growth. It is recounted that the factory burned down shortly after founding, and the building was rebuilt and production continued.

The culling standard was strict: according to the 1929 catalog, out of every one hundred forty-four blocks purchased, only four were found fit for the top grade. So that sound bowls that failed the cull would not go to waste, secondary lines sold under separate names were established in the early 1930s; His Royal Highness, Royal Stuart, Mayfair, Friar, Henley Club and Old England are the chief among these.

The Blue Dots

The earliest pipes had a single blue dot on the stem. This mark, echoing Dunhill's white dot, met with a legal challenge from his former employer, and the dispute was resolved differently in the two markets: the single-dot model continued to be produced in Europe for decades, while for North America a new solution was sought. First the dot was moved to the side face of the bowl, but very few pipes came out of this experiment. The lasting answer was four dots arranged to form a diamond running lengthwise. In the late 1920s the Eight Dot, carrying four dots on each face of the stem, was added; within the constraints of the Second World War this line was dropped, and the factory turned largely to war work — rubber and vulcanite parts, metal bands, precision turning. Because the dots were made not with paint but by driving pieces of blue rod into holes drilled into the stem, the symmetry of the arrangement is still taken today as the criterion for identifying an authentic stem.

Shape Names and the Alfred Era

The tradition of naming shapes goes back to the firm's earliest catalogs: in listings from the mid-1920s, nearly thirty shapes are named after London neighborhoods, resort towns and well-known Englishmen — Kensington, Chiswick, Wimbledon, Windermere, and the like. In catalogs from the same years, Dorset, Montrose and its roughened counterpart Argyle appear under a heading "for ladies"; unlike their counterparts, these slim-bodied models had a normal-sized bowl.

Joel Sasieni died on 19 December 1945; management passed in January 1946 to his son Abraham Alfred. Some sources give the death year as 1946. In the Alfred era, the phrase "Four Dot" was added to the shank, the prewar curling "Sasieni" script gave way to a more upright hand, and the dots were enlarged into an equilateral diamond. Alfred also added his own products: the Fantail/Slendaline stem patented in 1952, the lightweight Litewate line, the Ruff-Root sandblast registered in 1960, and the mid-grade Two Dot registered in 1966.

The Post-Family Era

Alfred sold the firm in 1979, reportedly to a group of South African investors led by Ian Chase, and remained on the board for a time. The new owners began with a limited reissue of the Eight Dot; according to the account, each of the roughly one hundred pipes made carried a tag signed by Alfred. The partnership did not last long: Alfred, who objected to moving beyond hardened rubber (vulcanite) for the stem, left the firm entirely once an acrylic-stemmed Ten Dot went to market.

The group handed the brand over in 1986 to James B. Russell, a New Jersey-based tobacco importer. In this period, place-named shapes and secondary lines were dropped, and nearly all production was offered under the name Four Dot; the shank stamp was reduced to two lines, and the wording began to be written with the Arabic numeral as "4 Dot." This is the most practical marker collectors use to separate the periods. In 2002 production passed to the Cadogan group, which also makes other old British brands such as Comoy's and GBD; according to stamp guides, the brand remains under this company today.