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Brand Dating Guides
A Bertram carries no year code. The stamp places it between 1874 and 1977. The number on the pipe is a price grade, not a year.
Updated 2026-10-01
Welcome. If your pipe says BERTRAM and WASHINGTON D.C., this guide helps you place it.
Bertram was a pipe shop and pipe maker in Washington, D.C. One family ran it over three generations.
A Bertram carries no year. Our sources give one wide range only: 1874 to 1977.
We cannot place a Bertram in one year or in one decade yet.
This is an honest answer, but not a full one. The open questions are at the end.
Our facts come from four sources that we read ourselves.
They are Pipedia, pipephil.eu, a Bertram shop catalogue and a magazine of January 1946.
Pipedia is an online pipe encyclopedia. Pipephil.eu is a website of pipe stamps and logos.
Where the sources disagree, we show both. We say when a fact has one source only.
Each rule has a rank: high, medium or low. High means strong, agreed evidence.
Medium means one good source or a general rule. Low means a wide range or a weak hint.
This guide has one rule only. Its rank is medium.
Three generations, from 1874 to 1977
In 1874 Bertram Goldmann, a German pipe maker, came to the United States.
He settled in Washington, D.C. Pipedia and pipephil.eu both give the year 1874.
The 1946 magazine says he came from Leipzig, more than 72 years before. One source only.
In 1927 Sydney Bertram Goldman opened a new factory, the Bertram Pipe Shop. Both websites give this year.
Pipephil.eu calls him the grandson of the founder.
The shop called itself The Nation's Pipe Maker. The catalogue prints these words above its address.
Both websites name three famous customers: Joseph Stalin, General Douglas MacArthur and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The 1946 magazine calls the owner Sid Bertram, the last of three generations of pipe makers.
It says he opened his shop to disabled war veterans and taught them pipe making.
His school began in the summer of 1945 with nine students. One source only.
Pipedia says the shop could not make enough pipes for all its customers.
So Bertram also bought pipes from other makers. Pipedia does not name them.
In the late 1960s the factory was robbed and set on fire.
This happened in the riots after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
Pipephil.eu says the production stopped then.
Pipedia says the workers tried to start again, but the shop never recovered.
Pipedia alone says the family closed the shop in 1977, so this year has one source only.
We keep the later year, because it gives the wider range.
A name, a city and a number
Pipephil.eu shows one Bertram pipe. The left side says Bertram, Washington. D.C.
The underside of that pipe carries the number 25.
Our cabinet records no logo on the stem. Our cabinet is our file of sourced dating facts for one maker.
The catalogue says the briar is Algerian. It says the pipes are never painted, stained or varnished.
A price grade with no rank
Our cabinet holds no ranked rule for the number. So it carries no rank and no date here.
Pipedia says the pipes were graded by numbers: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and so on.
A higher number meant a better pipe. The number was also the price.
A 10 sold for 1 dollar. A 20 sold for 2 dollars. One source only.
The pipe on pipephil.eu has the number 25, which is not a multiple of ten.
So the rule on Pipedia may not cover every number.
No source ties a number to a year.
From 1945 or later. No rank
We hold a catalogue of 13 pages called Pipes by Bertram.
We read it as machine-read text. So small reading errors are possible.
The pages that we read print no year. The person who put it online dates it to 1950.
The catalogue names the owner as Bertram III. It says he trains disabled veterans at his shop.
The 1946 magazine says this school began in the summer of 1945.
So the catalogue is from 1945 or later. We cannot fix its year more closely.
The catalogue sells pipes in six price groups with names, not with numbers.
Executive costs 10 dollars. Diplomat costs 7.50 dollars. Senator costs 5 dollars.
Judicial costs 3.50 dollars. Envoy costs 2.50 dollars. We could not read the price of Capitol.
Straight grain pipes cost from 10 to 25 dollars.
The catalogue gives the address 920 Fourteenth Street, N.W., Washington 5, D.C.
The 1946 magazine lists Bertrams at 910 14th Street, N.W.
We do not know if the shop moved or if one number is a printing error.
The number on the pipe is a grade, not a year. Never read 25 or 60 as a date.
Bertram Safferling is a different maker. He is a German maker of freehand pipes.
He worked in Stuttgart, and later in Tramin in Italy. His pipes do not belong in this guide.
The year 1927 is the year of the new factory. It is not the first year of the Bertram name.
So we do not use 1927 as the earliest year for a Bertram pipe.
The Bertram stamp does not prove that the Washington shop made the pipe. Some pipes were bought in.
The year 1950 for the catalogue comes from the title of the online copy only.
The two end dates differ: the late 1960s and 1977. The stamp cannot show which side of the fire a pipe is from.
The low prices in the catalogue are old prices. They say nothing about the value of a pipe today.
Read the name and the city on the left side of the shank.
BERTRAM with WASHINGTON D.C.
The family came to Washington in 1874. Pipedia gives 1977 for the closing; one source only. Pipephil.eu says production stopped in the late 1960s.
What We Don't Know Yet
Published deliberately. If you hold the catalogue, hallmarked example, or period document that closes one of these gaps, write to us — corrections are credited. Every open question across the encyclopedia is gathered on the Open Questions page.
Changelog
Sources
Holding a Bertramyou can't place? Our shelves usually hold a few — documented to this same standard.
Bertram in the Shop