Barling T.V.F. 5639 London England Smooth Bent Billiard Estate Pipe, Saddle Stem

This is a Barling T.V.F. bent billiard from the London years: a script Barling over 5639 and LONDON ENGLAND on the shank, T.V.F. beside it, and a black vulcanite saddle stem with a B and the BARLING name on its side. On the smooth briar, birdseye and flame grain show clearly.

There is no filter; the stem bends down and ends in a fishtail bit. The pipe comes with a red box, its lid printed BARI, EXCLUSIVE BRIAR PIPES, HANDMADE IN DENMARK, and a red drawstring sleeve in the same color.

THE MAKER The story of the house begins in 1812, when Benjamin Barling, a silversmith, opened his workshop in Marylebone, London. The firm first mounted meerschaum pipes in silver and turned to briar in the middle of the 1800s. In the first years of the twentieth century Barling began to cut its own briar bowls, and for most of its life it remained a family business. On 3 October 1960 the company was sold to Finlay, while the family went on managing it until the middle of 1962. Early in 1963 Imperial Tobacco took over Finlay, and with it Barling. Later the name moved to Denmark, then in 1980 to the Isle of Man, and in 2020 it was revived by Kopp, whose new pipes carry a lion's head set into the stem.

THE MARKS - Barling (in script) / 5639 / LONDON ENGLAND stamped on the shank - T.V.F. stamped on the shank - BENTON / MANCHESTER stamped on the shank - B and BARLING on the side of the stem

The script logo matters. The old family pipes were stamped BARLING'S MAKE in an arch. In the November 1962 Retailers' Catalogue the company changed to a script Barling, with no apostrophe and no s, above LONDON ENGLAND - exactly the stamp on this shank. From June 1962 Barling also used new four-digit numbers in which the first digit gives the size; a four-digit number that does not begin with 1, like 5639, almost always belongs to these corporate years or later. T.V.F. stands for The Very Finest, a Barling grade mark. BENTON over MANCHESTER is a second name stamped on this pipe.

Here the bowl is a bent billiard: a round, straight-sided bowl, with the shank and stem curving down toward the smoker. The saddle stem steps down from the round shank to a flatter, slimmer bit, and the fishtail end is wide and thin.

DATING T.V.F. was dropped from the new line of November 1962 and was back on Barling pipes by 1965. The English Barling factories closed in 1970. There is no lion's head in the stem, so this is not one of the 2020 revival pipes. Together the script logo, LONDON ENGLAND and T.V.F. point to England, roughly between 1965 and 1970, in the years after Imperial Tobacco took over. Writers disagree on where to draw the line between these corporate years and the later ones: some end the period in 1964, others in 1968 or 1970.

Condition: pre-smoked, very good condition.

THE MEASUREMENTS - Length: 148 mm (5.83 in) - Bowl height: 55 mm (2.17 in) - Bowl width: 39 mm (1.54 in) - Chamber diameter: 20 mm (0.79 in) - Chamber depth: 50 mm (1.97 in) - Weight: 51 g (1.80 oz)