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to the idea. Dunhill's are mostly classic shapes in modest sizes, as the British prefer smaller pipes than their American cousins. Dark colors are chosen because they don't attract as much attention and don't look "new" for long. Classic, conservative, quietly elegant, impeccably finished, but certainly not "showy." The way an English gentlemen dresses. It is suggested by Alfred Dunhill's description of the modern pipe in the Pipe Book (1924): "The perfection... is that of simplicity. elaborately decorated and mounted pipes, like pipes of uncouth shape and size, have had their day, save among the young and semi-barbaric."
The value of Dunhill pipes has come to be enhanced though a feature that started out as an efficiency measure for the maker. Ever since the earliest manufacturing days, Dunhill pipes have been stamped with a series of numbers in a code that specifies the year of manufacture, the shape of the mouthpiece, and other data deemed important. Passionate collectors "broke" the code long ago, and explanations for its cabalistic interpretation abound, some in silly perpetuity. Nonetheless, the code establishes provenance, or verifiable history, without which any item has little more than ordinary market value. Thus the presence of the code stamp insures that an old Dunhill can command thousands of dollars from a serious, "must-have" collector. Dunhill changes the coding system regularly to keep counterfeiters on their toes. |
Richard Dunhill, grandson of the founder and now president of the Dunhill Group, himself a passionate collector of the company's pipes from the past, buys old specimens for the Dunhill Pipe Museum, housed in the company's London Headquarters, still on Duke and Jermyn Streets. "Oddly enough," said Dunhill in an interview a few years ago, "we don't have examples of every model we made from the first days my grandfather started the business, so I have my people buying them and we'll eventually mount them all to show a chronology of the company's development." He is particularly keen on buying those made before 1940 in shapes, sizes and finishes no longer produced.
The Dunhill mystique is no mystery; it's based on integrity and life-long dedicated service to impeccable products. Even today, the company will repair, replace, or otherwise adjust any product that has been used judiciously but has failed to meet the customer's expectations. In Alfred Dunhill's often quoted credo, reprinted in the 1996 Pipe Catalogue as A Family Philosophy: "It must be useful. It must work dependably. It must be beautiful. It must last. It must be the best of its kind." Nearly 100 years after Alfred Dunhill started in business and became synonymous with quality, the business themes are still a combination of utility and luxury. And you bet what you pay for. |
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