RBA MOCKBA 1C Smooth Straight Billiard, Russia — Era Undetermined

This reference example is a smooth-finished straight billiard attributed to the Russian marque RBA, carrying the stamp MOCKBA — the Cyrillic rendering of Moscow — together with the designation 1C, a marking consistent with the shape or grade codes commonly used by Eastern European and Russian pipe workshops to organise production lines. It entered the archive from a Russian estate. The billiard is the foundational shape of the pipemaker's repertoire: a cylindrical bowl set at close to a right angle to a straight shank, with the shank length traditionally approximating the height of the bowl. It is the form against which pipe proportion is most often judged, and the shape most manufacturers use to demonstrate the discipline of their turning and drilling. Presented here in a smooth finish with a straight stem, the example follows the classic canon without embellishment, allowing the stamped nomenclature to serve as its primary identifying feature. Russian pipe production has historically been less thoroughly documented in Western reference literature than the output of English, French, Danish, or Italian houses, and marques such as RBA are known chiefly through the pipes themselves and the markings they carry. The MOCKBA stamp anchors this example geographically to Moscow, but the marque published no factory date-coding system that would permit a year-specific attribution. Within the encyclopedia, the piece serves two reference purposes: first, as a documented specimen of Moscow-stamped pipemaking under the RBA name; and second, as a study example of the straight smooth billiard as executed outside the major Western European production centres. Its stamped 1C code is preserved here as primary evidence for future cross-referencing against other examples of the marque.