Loading
Loading
7 photographsArchive Record FUH-4BGX-8XBW-U
undetermined
Reference example
This pipe is documented here as an example for study — it is a record in the archive, not an item offered for sale. Everything below is what the piece itself, and the evidence around it, will honestly support.
Original stem
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Stem replaced or re-cut
No
Faridunhill standing declaration
Rim cleaned (no wood removed)
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Refinished
No
Faridunhill standing declaration
Chamber reamed
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Smoked
Yes
owner stated
Facts, not a grade. We do not score a pipe out of ten: a number would rank a restored pipe above an honest one, and restoration is exactly what this hobby prices down. Every line above is checkable by anyone holding the pipe. Lines marked Faridunhill standing declaration rest on our published, dated statement of shop practice (v1.0, 2026-07-29) — not on an inspection of this individual pipe. It is one document, in public, that you can hold us to.
This reference example documents a Vauen Luxus bent billiard finished in sandblast and fitted for the 9mm filter system that has become the defining convention of German pipemaking. The bent billiard is among the most enduring forms in the canon: a cylindrical bowl of classical billiard proportion set on a shank and stem that curve downward, shifting the bowl's weight closer to the hand and jaw and giving the pipe a relaxed, sit-in-the-mouth balance that the straight billiard does not offer. The sandblast treatment strips away the softer growth of the wood's surface to expose the harder ring structure beneath, producing a tactile, craggy relief that also lightens the pipe overall. Vauen occupies a singular place in pipe history. Based in Nuremberg, the firm traces its lineage to the mid-nineteenth century and stands as Germany's oldest continuously operating pipe manufacturer, formed from the union of earlier Nuremberg workshops. The company is closely associated with the 9mm activated-charcoal filter — a system it helped standardise and popularise — and virtually the entire German market followed its lead, making the 9mm bore a hallmark of German-made pipes generally and of Vauen in particular. The Luxus designation identifies one of the factory's named production series; the filter fitting on this example is fully consistent with the house's engineering identity. Dating the piece rests on what the record preserves. The source caption supplies brand, line, shape, finish, and filter specification, but no nomenclature stampings or date-bearing marks are transcribed, and Vauen production pipes do not carry a factory date code that would fix a year of manufacture on their own.
2022-12-21
Logged from the Faridunhill archive — photographed and posted on Instagram, 2022-12-21.
2023-02-24
Sold through Etsy for USD 45. No buyer is recorded.
2026-07-29
5 checklist facts recorded under Faridunhill's standing declaration of shop practice (2026-07-29).
2026-08-28
Honesty pass: statements the source does not support were removed (1 unsupported/absence sentence(s) removed from the essay).
2026-08-28
Honesty pass: statements the source does not support were removed (1 unsupported/absence sentence(s) removed from the essay).
This record is append-only. Nothing is deleted — a correction is a new entry that supersedes the old one, and both stay visible.
USD 45sold 2023-02-24 · Etsy
From 1 recorded sale — this pipe, this day. A single transaction is not a market price, and we will never print one as if it were.
The sample this sits in: Faridunhill has recorded 248 sales of Vauen between 2016–2026 — median $60, most falling between $31 and $123.
The date shown is the date of sale, not the date this page was published. Our own transaction record, published free. No buyer appears here — not a name, not initials, not a country. Counted across both of our channels — eBay 2015–2022 and Etsy 2022–2026 — so the series is continuous and a change of marketplace is never read as a change in price.
Nobody leaves empty-handed. If you hold the catalogue page, the dated advertisement, or a hallmarked sibling that closes one of these — or simply own this model and can measure yours — send it in. Contributions are checked, credited to you by name, and the record is updated with the date it changed.
Instagram post, 2022-12-21. Published to a third-party platform on that date and archived since — a timestamp we cannot move. It is evidence that this object existed and looked like this, then.
The photographs are the identity. 7 images of this pipe's grain, stamping and stem are held as its fingerprint. The handle above is only a handle: lose it, and the pipe can still be matched back to this record from its grain.