American Estate Medico sandblast bent billiard

Medico built its name on the paper filter it patented in 1933. This one does not use it: a plain 4mm airway runs straight through the tapered vulcanite stem to a fishtail bit, with no cartridge and no filter chamber to load.

This is an American estate pipe: a Medico bent billiard in sandblasted briar, fitted with a black vulcanite taper stem and a fishtail mouthpiece.

Medico traces to S.M. Frank & Co., where Sam Frank had been selling pipes since 1900. Working with Ferdinand Feuerbach, the firm also produced the Royal DeMuth and Hesson Guard Milano lines before Medico existed as a name in its own right. The Medico brand and its absorbent paper filter were launched together in 1933 - the filter itself covered by a patent application filed by Minton in 1932 and granted, in improved form, as patent 1,967,585 in 1934. S.M. Frank went on to acquire the Kaywoodie brands in 1955, and Medico continued as a separate line under the same ownership. In 1966 the company developed Brylon, a briar-and-resin composite, and moved some of its lower lines onto it to hold down cost; the briar lines - what would become Silver Crest, Premier, Bold Rebel, Kensington and Windsor - continued in briar alongside them. Medico pipes were also distributed in England through Cadogan and Oppenheimer Pipe.

THE MARKS
- Stamped MEDICO on the shank

The billiard is the reference shape against which every other bowl is measured: a straight-sided, flat-bottomed bowl set at roughly ninety degrees to a round shank, in proportions old enough that departures from it are described as variations on a billiard rather than shapes in their own right. Bending the shank and stem, as here, turns that upright reference form into a pipe meant to be gripped low in the hand or clenched in the teeth without the bowl swinging forward, and it lowers the weight of the bowl relative to the bite - useful with a taper stem, which narrows continuously from shank to button rather than stepping down at a saddle. The fishtail slot cut into the bit fans the airway out from the round bore to a wide, flat opening at the lip, spreading the draw across the tongue instead of delivering it as a single jet the way a round drilled bit does. A straight billiard in the same bowl would sit the shank in line with the bit; here the bend is the whole point of the shape.

Sandblasting is a finishing method, not a pattern: the briar block is worked with a wire brush or blasted with an abrasive medium after the softer summer growth of the grain has been burned or picked out, so the harder growth rings stand up in relief. It leaves the wood's own structure - its grain - as the visible surface texture, which is why no two sandblasted bowls read quite the same under a thumb. Finish and grain: see the photographs.

Condition: pre-smoked, graded good. The vulcanite stem carries scratches consistent with handling. The briar shows faint scratches around the bowl; the stain elsewhere is intact. No fills, cracks or repairs are noted.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 137mm (5.5") - bowl height 47mm (1.9") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - chamber depth 40mm (1.6") - bowl width 38mm (1.5") - weight 1.23 oz - bore 4mm, no filter

Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.

SKU: 071