Parker 9mm 109 Smooth Bent Bulldog Pipe, Reddish Stain, Diamond Shank, Metal Band, Vulcanite Diamond Stem, Fishtail Bit

Loring, writing in The Dunhill Briar Pipe, says only a few Parkers were true Dunhill failings: most were set aside before they were finished, and briar was also bought elsewhere. Parker pipes were never offered in Dunhill's own catalogues or shops.

Dunhill opened a factory next door to the Hardcastle works in 1935, took 49% of Hardcastle in 1936 and the rest in 1946; Parker-Hardcastle Limited followed in 1967. In the war years Parker was not on the government's list of approved briar makers, so it turned to the "Wunup", a pipe of bakelite and clay. Parker sold well in the United States from the 1930s to the 1950s; sales there later faded, and the brand returned to the United States in 1991.

THE SHAPE AND THE STEM A bulldog bowl is wide in the middle and narrows toward the rim. On this pipe two cut lines run round the bowl below the rim. The shank is a diamond, with four flat faces, and it ends in a square metal band. The black vulcanite stem is squared at the band end, tapers as it bends down and ends in a fishtail bit, flattened and widening at the end. With the stem out of the shank, the tenon can be seen in the photographs.

THE FINISH The bowl and the shank are smooth and stained a reddish brown. The stamps sit on a side of the shank, between the bowl and the band.

DATING Parker stamped a date code, a number after MADE IN LONDON over ENGLAND, from 1924 to 1957, using the numbers 1 to 24 and later an underlined 0 to 7. The 109 on this shank is a three-digit number, outside every code range, so it is not a date code and the year cannot be fixed from the stamps. It reads as a shape number, but no Parker shape chart has been found, so its meaning is not known. The plain PARKER, not PARKER'S, does not narrow the date either.

THE MEASUREMENTS - Length: 145 mm (5.71 in) - Bowl height: 44 mm (1.73 in) - Bowl width: 45 mm (1.77 in) - Chamber diameter: 20 mm (0.79 in) - Chamber depth: 33 mm (1.30 in) - Weight: 50 g (1.76 oz)