Chacom Epsom 944 Reddish Smooth Straight Billiard Estate Pipe - Acrylic Army Mount, 9mm Filter

Some stems are built to come apart with a straight pull, not a twist. This one is.

The shank is stamped CHACOM EPSOM, with the number 944 following the line name - the shape code as stamped, and we quote it exactly as it appears rather than guess at what it once meant in a Chacom shape chart we do not have in front of us. This is a straight billiard: reddish smooth briar, acrylic army mount, tapered stem, 9mm filter chamber, fishtail slot at the bit.

Chacom is the trading name of Chapuis-Comoy & Cie of Saint-Claude. The Comoy side of the story starts with Francois Comoy, making boxwood and clay pipes for Napoleon's army at Avignon-les-Saint-Claude in 1825. Henri Comoy, born 1850, was taken prisoner in Switzerland in 1870 and there met his Chapuis cousins - the meeting that eventually joined the two names. Henri founded H. Comoy & Co in London in 1879, with Saint-Claude supplying the raw ebauchons and bowls. The formal partnership came in 1922 as Chapuis-Comoy & Cie, and in 1928 the brand CHACOM itself was created - the name a contraction of CHApuis and COMoy. The 1930s brought a crisis merger under the name La Bruyere, at the time the largest pipe-making concern in the world, before Chacom regained its own commercial footing after 1945 and took the top sales position in France and Belgium by 1946. The company reverted to the Chapuis-Comoy name in 1957.

THE MARKS
- CHACOM EPSOM stamped on the shank, the line name
- 944 stamped following the line name, the shape code as marked

A straight billiard is the standard against which every other bowl shape in the trade is measured: a round bowl of even wall thickness set at ninety degrees to a straight shank, built for balance in the hand and a cool, even burn from rim to heel. What sets this example apart is the mount. An army mount joins the stem to the shank so that the two pull straight apart for cleaning, rather than twisting free the way a standard tenon and mortise do - a fitting associated with pipes meant to be field-stripped quickly, hence the name. Here the mount itself is acrylic, worked to sit flush against the shank face. The tenon carries a 9mm filter chamber, and the bit opens into a fishtail slot, a wide, flattened aperture that spreads the draw across the tongue rather than delivering it through a single narrow bore.

The finish is a reddish smooth stain, as stated by the seller. Finish and grain beyond that are best judged from the photographs.

Condition: the rim shows darkening and scratches. The briar carries faint stain scratches around the bowl. The stem shows tiny bite marks. No cracks, fills or repairs are noted.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 152mm (6.1") - bowl height 50mm (2.0") - bowl width 39mm (1.6") - chamber depth 43mm (1.7") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - weight 1.8 oz - 9mm filter

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

SKU: SKU-020