Oldenkott SUPRA Bruyere, Shape 132 Straight Billiard, 20th Century (Undetermined)

This reference example is a smooth straight billiard from Oldenkott's SUPRA Bruyere line, carrying the shape number 132 and attributed to German production. The bowl is — 'Bruyere' being the traditional Continental designation for root, the heat-resistant burl of Erica arborea that became the dominant pipe-making material in the nineteenth century and remains the standard against which other woods are measured. The pipe presents the smooth finish characteristic of the line, with a straight stem completing the classic profile. Oldenkott is one of the venerable names in the German tobacco trade, a firm whose roots reach deep into the Rhineland's long association with pipes and pipe tobacco. Pipes bearing the Oldenkott name circulated widely in the German domestic market through the twentieth century, and lines such as SUPRA Bruyere represent the company's offerings aimed at the everyday smoker — soundly made, conventionally shaped, and stamped with a numbered shape system typical of Continental factory production. The billiard is the foundational shape of the classical pipe canon: a cylindrical bowl set at approximately a right angle to a straight shank of roughly equal length, finished with a straight stem. Shape 132 places this example within Oldenkott's numbered catalogue, where such designations allowed retailers and smokers to reorder a familiar form. The billiard's proportions have remained essentially unchanged for well over a century, which makes the shape itself a poor dating tool. Dating rests on the SUPRA and 132 stampings together with the owner's attribution as a German estate piece. German factory brands of this class did not employ systematic date codes, so nomenclature and market context are the only available anchors. On that basis the pipe is placed within a broad twentieth-century bracket, with the precise decade of manufacture left undetermined pending further documentary evidence on the SUPRA Bruyere line's production span.