Dunhill's Long-Shank Canadian Pipes: ES, ODA 850, And 851

Dunhill's long-shank Canadian pipes appear in the brand's old shape chart under the letters ES, and in the postwar ODA line under the numbers 850 and 851. All three pair a slender, oval-sectioned, elongated shank with a mid-sized bowl, and at a glance they are difficult to tell apart. What sets this trio apart in the collecting literature, though, is not their resemblance to one another but the fact that each of the three codes has a rare variant with a shank far longer than its usual measurement.

What Distinguishes The Three Codes

On a standard ES, the shank runs roughly seven and a half centimeters from the back of the bowl to where the mouthpiece begins, and the mouthpiece itself has a flattened oval section. On the 850 and 851, by contrast, the shank starts thicker at the bowl and tapers toward the mouthpiece, and both have a tapered oval mouthpiece. The 851's mouthpiece is noticeably long, which lengthens the pipe overall: a 1963 Shell 851 measures over 19 centimeters, while a 1964 Root Briar 850 comes in at roughly 16.6 centimeters. The 851 is rare in any finish. The 845, the series' third Canadian, is the most commonly encountered Canadian in the ODA line and is genuinely large-bowled; its shank typically runs between seven and eight and a half centimeters, and a 1973 Shell example exceeds 17 centimeters overall. Within the Canadian family, ES's smaller-scale counterpart was produced under the EC code; a 1964 Shell EC has been measured at between fourteen and fifteen centimeters.

The Four-Inch Shank

In nearly every year the ES was produced, a handful of examples have turned up with shanks measuring between 10 and 11.5 centimeters; the longest documented shank runs to roughly 11.3 centimeters. Most known pieces date to the 1950s and 1960s. So this is not a shape variation applied in a given year and then dropped, but a measurement that recurred intermittently over half a century. The same rare long shanks turn up on the 850 and 851 as well; no such example is known for the 845, whose longest recorded shank runs to about nine and a half centimeters. A long-shank Canadian demands a briar block larger and more flawless than usual — a single crack or sand pit anywhere along the shank's length ruins the entire piece. How the long shank could exist under the same shape code without ever entering the standard line is not explained by factory records; the question has been debated among collectors ever since John C. Loring compiled the known examples in 2001.

The Codes' Lifespan

The brand has made Canadians since the 1910s; although the ES's bowl grew somewhat larger in the 1920s, the pipe's overall look remained largely stable for half a century. Dunhill's lettered and short-numbered codes, used until the mid-1970s, were organized so that each corresponded to a single shape; even whether the mouthpiece was tapered or saddle-cut required its own code. The meaning of ES is not known with certainty, though the common reading is "extended shank." The ODA series, which records indicate was introduced in 1950 with three-digit numbers starting with 8, comprised shapes noticeably larger than the brand's standard sizes; for details of the series, see the Early Dunhill OD Pipes entry. Of the three Canadians in the series, the 850 is one of the few ODAs pictured in the brand's 1968 wholesale/export catalogue. With the shift to the five-digit system around 1975 — which combined length, mouthpiece type, and bowl shape into a single code — the ES fell out of use, and the 850 and 851 shapes largely disappeared as well.