Merchant Service: Bing Crosby's Slender-Stemmed Billiard

Merchant Service is a British pipe brand founded in London in the 1930s by Herbert Merchant, one that made its name in the interwar years. Rather than a wide range of shapes, the brand is remembered for a single silhouette: a small-bowled billiard with a long, pencil-thin stem. Today this proportion is linked in the community with the name of Bing Crosby; makers and factories alike have listed the same line in their own catalogs under names like "Bing" or "Bing's Favourite."

The Early London Years

Merchant Service Ltd. made its pipes in London; surviving pieces are usually stamped "MERCHANT SERVICE" and "LONDON MADE," alongside a shape number. Although the catalog included classic forms familiar from the English and French traditions, the brand's reputation was built on the slender-stemmed billiard.

Herbert Merchant died in 1944, yet production continued into the mid-century. Records indicate the firm later passed into the hands of Holland Penny Limited, with the brand rights eventually transferring to Imperial Tobacco. Sources do not give precise dates or the exact order of these two transitions.

The Birth of the "Bing" Proportion

The verifiable side of the naming is simple: Crosby was photographed time and again with pipes of this proportion, and the shape gradually came to bear his name. The rest is legend. As the story goes, the two men met on a golf course, where the singer took a liking to the pencil-thin stem on Merchant's own pipe and had similar ones made for himself; the details vary from source to source. The practical rationale for the shape is clear enough, though: with the bowl held well away from the face, smoke doesn't sting the eyes, and the stem doesn't block the line of sight.

The proportion soon made its way into other makers' shape charts as well. Peterson's 445 "Long Pastime," which appears in its 1937 catalog and stretches to seven inches, is one of the most extreme examples of this family; Savinelli, for its part, listed the shape outright under the name "Bing's Favorite." A single brand's signature thus became one of the industry-wide examples of how shape names get absorbed into common trade usage.

A Second Life in America

The English firm's trail went cold before the century was out; its name returned to circulation only in the 21st century, thanks to two Americans who took over the brand rights. Gregory Polla and Len Fogel met through their shared membership in the Hudson Valley Pipe Club. Fogel's background was on the retail side: a pipe smoker since his youth, he had worked at specialist tobacconists including the Connoisseur in New York, and once he retired from hospital administration he found time for his own pipe project. Polla, by contrast, came from a background of automotive service, machining, and woodworking — a name who knew the production side.

Polla's path into pipemaking dates to 2013. The decisive contact was meeting Bill Feuerbach, who had headed S. M. Frank & Co.; through him Polla got the chance to hear factory methods directly from a man who had overseen production for major American factory brands like Kaywoodie, Yello-Bole, and Medico. Joseph Skoda and Rolando Negoita, from the same club, also mentored him in the early days. The division of labor settled naturally: Fogel took design and concept, Polla the workbench. Records indicate the pair began working together in 2018, and the new Merchant Service was introduced in 2019.

Polla avoids the labels "handmade" or "artisan" for the pipes he turns out in batches; by his own description, this is a small one-man factory. A limited number of classic shapes are produced to repeatable dimensions, with the "Standard" billiard true to the original proportion alongside a larger-bowled "Special." His own one-off pieces bearing his personal signature form a separate line, marked "Merchant Service Originals."