Sasieni's Subsidiary Brands and Their Dating

Sasieni's subsidiary brands are the secondary pipe lines the London firm Sasieni sold under separate names beneath its flagship series, Four Dot. There is no mark on these pipes that gives the production year directly; dating relies on reading together the distributor name that appears in catalogues and advertisements, the layout of the shank stamp, the shape number, and the finish name. For the firm's general history, see the Sasieni entry.

The Origin of the Lines

Sasieni's founding rested on a patent for oven-curing briar bowls; the application was filed on 6 January 1919 and the text published that same March. The device, which described briar bowls fitted to rotating panels in a heated chamber and periodically removed to have surface moisture wiped off, compressed the years of natural drying into weeks. In the founder's 1924 US patent, his address is given as the Stoke Newington district of London; patents taken out in the same years cover an extension that keeps moisture from reaching the joint between mouthpiece and bowl. This early cluster of patents is considered the main factor that let him leave the Dunhill workshop and begin producing under his own name.

The grading standard was strict; as bowls that failed to earn the Four Dot stamp but whose flaws stayed on the surface piled up, separate lines were opened to make use of them. In the 1935-1937 catalogues of the American distributor London House, eight names are listed: His Royal Highness, Royal Stuart, Friar, Mayfair, Henley Club, Pickwick (later Mr. Pickwick), Berkeley Club, and Old England. The short-lived London House line was added to part of the 1936 and 1937 lists; by the roughly 1939 catalogue only six names remained. Each line occupying its own rung in the list shows that these were not a single "second-quality" heap, but grades separated from one another. Some of the names were also registered separately in the United States: Englandaire and Mayfair in 1931, Friar in 1934, and the sandblasted Windsor in 1951.

Shape Number and Finish

In the catalogues of the 1920s, shapes were named after London districts, holiday towns, and well-known Englishmen. Once the same shape began to be produced across several lines, this naming scheme stopped working. In the mid-1930s catalogues each shape was given a number, and the lines were also distinguished by the leading digit of that number: 5 for His Royal Highness, 6 for Mayfair, 7 for Old England and Berkeley Club (and often Henley Club too), 9 for Friar, 10 for Pickwick; Royal Stuart's number carries no prefix. The finish name also depends on the line — according to records, Friar is russet, Henley Club is dark red, Pickwick is walnut-toned, while Old England began with a roughened bowl. Among finishes, hand-carved rustic texture was largely reserved for Four Dot; the firm's own sandblasting method was registered under the name Ruff-Root in 1960.

Distributor Name and Slogan

The name of the American distributor appearing in catalogues and advertisements is the most useful clue, since it narrows the field to a fairly tight range: Maurice Rapoport (1923-1926), Sasieni, London Ltd. (1926-1933), London House (1933-1940), John Hudson Moore (1940-1955), and Sasieni of London (1955-1979). Slogans narrow the range further still — the phrase "World's Premier Pipe" corresponds to the late 1920s and early 1930s, while "Royal Pipe of England" belongs to the late 1930s.

After the Family Era

The family era closed when the firm was sold in 1979; according to records, the buyers were a group of South African investors led by Ian Chase, who kept the Four Dot name going. The company passed to James Russell's firm in 1986. At this point the shank stamp shrank from three lines to two: the first line reads "Sasieni 4 Dot," the second the finish name. On estate examples, this is the marker most often relied on to separate the family era from what came after.