Comoy's of London: Dating a Comoy's Pipe

A white ring, a black centre and a black gap plug — three separate pieces. Introduced about 1919 and used until the Cadogan takeover. The end year is where our sources genuinely part company: the smokingpipes house history says the three-piece C remained in use until 1979, while both Derek Green's guide and pipephil say it was cancelled in the early 1980s. We publish the wide honest end of 1985 rather than pick a winner, so that a real 1980-83 pipe is not excluded by our own bracket. One period tell worth knowing: the 1920s and early-1930s version is thinner and more delicate than the post-war one.

The one stem mark on this page we rank high. Grand Slam pipes wore a three-band bar instead of the C for the line's first twelve years, and it was replaced by the three-piece C after the war. If you have the bar, you have a Grand Slam and you have a bracket, in one look.

The early Cadogan generation: a single drilled inlay with a printed C, or simply a painted one. Green's account is that the inlay came first and was replaced by laser "more recently" — he gives no year, which is why our end is flagged as approximate rather than sourced. G.L. Pease independently reads a painted-on C as a Cadogan-era marker.

Recent Cadogan work. Ranked low deliberately: nobody has published the year the laser replaced the inlay, so our floor is an estimate. This is the open question we are actively trying to close — see below.

Pipephil records that for one wartime year the Blue Riband carried a blue C rather than a white one. The year itself is unknown, so we publish the war as the bracket. A rarity, and a nice one.

A rare early Par Excellence variant, recorded from a cased pair. Single-example evidence — treat as a hint, not a verdict.

The earliest form, sometimes canted or underlined. G.L. Pease's draft records a 1916 example pairing this script with a block sans-serif LONDON MADE, which is exactly the combination our brackets predict.

The long middle period: upper-case serif capitals with a big C, arched, with the grade stamped in block letters directly beneath. Pease dates a serif big-C example to 1919 from a cased Prima set, and runs the arched style to about 1938; Green has it continuing briefly after the war, which is why our bracket ends at 1948 rather than 1939.

The most useful lettering rule on the pipe, because the window is narrow. Pipedia's dating guide puts the change at 1945 or slightly later, Pease at the mid-to-late 1940s, and both have it replaced in the early 1950s by a sans-serif version that has the apostrophe back. If the name reads COMOYS with nothing between the Y and the S, you are in a nine-year window.

Pease records that serifs came back to the name in the 1960s in a plainer typeface than the pre-war one. We publish it as a hint rather than an encoded rule — it is a single source describing a gradual change, and we have no second witness for it.

The earliest stamp, and Henri Comoy's own phrase. The end is honestly unsettled: pipephil says it ran until about 1915, Green says it continued on into the 1930s. We publish the wide end at 1939.

Narrow and low-confidence for a good reason: Green documents this straight-line form on only two pipes, both hallmarked Old Bruyeres of 1921. Two examples is a sighting, not a period.

The widest bracket on this page, because the sightings are scattered: Green documents the circle in 1910 on a Cecil, again in 1921, then through the 1930s. Pease is much more specific — he has the circular MADE IN ENGLAND becoming the standard country stamp from about 1938 to the mid or late 1940s — and Grand Slam pipes of 1933–45 carry it alongside the patent number. Take the wide bracket alone, but if the same pipe reads COMOYS without an apostrophe, the two rules together tighten it to the middle 1940s.

The post-war standard. Pipephil dates its first use to the late 1940s or early 1950s, Green to the early-1950s export drive, and both agree it is never pre-war — so we publish a 1948 floor. We give it no ceiling at all: Cadogan kept variants of it in use, and an absent end year is more honest than an invented one.

The top grade from the early 1900s, dropped before the Second World War — Green notes that Royal became the top standard grade "after the Prima was dropped," which dates the drop only relative to itself. The 1939 end is therefore our approximation of "pre-war," not a published year. Pease's earliest dated serif example is a cased 1919 Prima set.

★The far end here was corrected by our own research on 22 July 2026 and the correction is worth reading, because it is a good example of why we keep brackets wide. Every collector source says Old Bruyere was gone by the 1965 catalogue, and that is true — of the UK catalogue. But the Comoy House / Vanguard price list for the United States, printed "EFFECTIVE July 15, 1975" and marked "OUR 150th YEAR," sells the Old Bruyere at twenty-five dollars. Whether that is continued US stock or a US-market continuation, nobody has established. So we moved our end year from 1964 to 1975 rather than tell an American collector that the pipe in his hand cannot exist. Hallmarked 1921 examples anchor the early end.

Ranked low because our sources conflict at the start and neither offers proof: Green owns a hallmarked 1925 example, while pipephil gives the period as 1933 onward. A hallmarked pipe beats a period statement, so our floor sits at a cautious 1920. Gone from the 1965 catalogue. Some Virgin Briars were fitted with the Grand Slam stinger — so a 2001612 patent number does not by itself mean Grand Slam.

Introduced in 1925, the firm's centenary year — a date both of our main sources give independently — and produced into the 1970s. The 1979 end is our rounding of "the 1970s."

The best-evidenced line on the page and the one our own archive work reaches. 1933 is the year the trade mark was registered and the year the metal-filter patent was introduced; the first pipe advertisement nobody has found, including us. Our earliest primary attestation is retail, not launch: Dundee, 29 October 1934, at 8s 6d. The line ran into the 1970s. Between those ends we can now show it nationally advertised in December 1936, carrying named local agencies in 1938 and 1939, and still on the shelf at the outbreak of war.

A floor only, and a soft one. Green believes the line was named in 1936 for the Queen Mary's Blue Riband crossing — a lovely story, and he flags it himself as belief. We searched the British newspaper record for Comoy's Blue Riband advertisements and found none at all, so we have nothing to corroborate it with and nothing to contradict it either. No documented end year, so we publish no ceiling.

Introduced "around the same time" as the Blue Riband, to which it was the second grade — a lighter finish made for the American market. A relative date is not a date, hence the low rank. Still being priced in 1979, so the floor stands alone.

"Probably just before WWII" is the whole of the published evidence, and 1937 is our reading of it. Floor only.

Introduced in the 1930s and — importantly for anyone dating one — reintroduced in 1979 as the Extraordinaire I and II in a two-tone walnut finish. So this name is a floor and can never be a ceiling, and a pipe stamped Extraordinaire may be from either era. The 800-series shape numbers are the Magnum-sized Extraordinaires of the 1920s and 30s.

1930s examples and a presence in the 1965 catalogue. A floor, weakly evidenced, and a name so widely used across the trade that it should never carry the weight of a date on its own.

The Grand Slam metal stinger and filter, introduced with the line in 1933. Note that it also appears on Virgin Briars fitted with the same stinger, so the patent number brackets the FITTING, not the line.

It is a leather-washer size. Published here because it is the mark most often mistaken for a date code on this brand, and because a rule that stops you dating something wrongly is worth as much as one that dates it right.

Cecil, Everyman (also Every Man), Town Hall, Guildhall, Yomac, H.C., Standard, Ace of Spades, Ancestor, Astor, Atwood, Britannia, Carlyle, Charles Cross, Claridge, Cromwell, Dorchester, Dunbar, Drury Lane, Dulcet, Emerson, Falcon, Grand Master, Gresham, Jockey, Kingsway, Lion's Head, Lord Clive, Hyde Park, Lloyds, Mc Gahey, Moorgate, Overland, Royal Falcon, Scotland Yard, St James, Sunrise, Sussex, The Academy Award, The Exmoor, The Golden Arrow, The Mansion House, Trident, Twin Bore and Wilshire. Ranked high because the list itself is well documented — not because we can date any individual second.

The one second we can put a primary date on. A Banffshire tobacconist advertised "Comoy's Everyman (fine selection), at 5/-" through the autumn of 1931 — priced above generic pipes at 2/6 and just under the City-de-Luxe at 5/6, and selling in the far north of Scotland, which tells us the distribution was already national. Still being sold in the United States in 1975 in walnut, sandblast and natural finishes.