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7 photographsArchive Record FUH-RG2Q-A392-W
Era 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 is a French-made bent billiard from the Silver Match marque, executed in briar with a smooth finish and carried in the encyclopedia under its factory shape number, 637. The billiard is the foundational shape of the briar pipe canon: a cylindrical bowl of roughly equal height and shank length, here rendered in its bent configuration, in which the stem curves downward to drop the bowl below the line of the bit. The bend shifts the pipe's weight toward the hand and jaw, a geometry long favoured for comfortable clenching, and the smooth finish leaves the briar's natural grain visible rather than concealing it beneath rustication or sandblasting.
Silver Match is a French name best known in the broader smokers'-accessory trade, particularly for lighters; briar pipes bearing the mark belong to the large tradition of French factory pipe production, in which established accessory and tobacco-trade names were applied to serially numbered briar shapes. The "Real Briar" designation on such pipes served as a material guarantee, a stamping convention that became widespread in factory work of the mid-twentieth century, when briar substitutes and composite bowls circulated in the lower reaches of the market and makers wished to distinguish genuine burl.
Dating rests on the character of the markings rather than on any factory code, since brands of this class did not employ dating systems. The combination of a French origin, the "Real Briar" guarantee stamp, and a three-digit serial shape number places the pipe within the recognisable idiom of French factory production, yielding an honest bracket of the mid-to-late twentieth century. The pipe entered the archive from a French estate, and its record is preserved here as a representative document of the Silver Match name and of the bent billiard as interpreted by the French factory tradition.
2022-11-01
Logged from the Faridunhill archive — photographed and posted on Instagram, 2022-11-01.
2022-11-08
Sold through Etsy for USD 24. No buyer is recorded.
2026-08-27
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 (era 'mid-to-late 20th century' -> undetermined).
This record is append-only. Nothing is deleted — a correction is a new entry that supersedes the old one, and both stay visible.
USD 24sold 2022-11-08 · 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 289 sales of Silver Match between 2015–2026 — median $90, most falling between $39 and $149.
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, 2022-11-01. 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.