Cherry Hill Large Bent Billiard Smooth Briar Estate Pipe - Oval Shank, Vulcanite Saddle Stem, 9mm Filter, Fishtail Bit

The stamp reads simply CHERRY HILL. No model number, no shape number, no country mark rides beside it. What is left to describe is the pipe itself, and there is a good deal of it: a large bent billiard, deep in the bowl, cut for a long smoke rather than a quick one.

This is a bent billiard in smooth briar, oval shank, fitted with a black vulcanite saddle stem and a fishtail bit, bored for a 9mm filter. The only stamping present is the name CHERRY HILL on the shank. No grade mark, no shape number, no country of origin accompanies it, and none is claimed here.

The billiard is the oldest formalized shape in the briar tradition: a cylindrical bowl set at a right angle to a straight shank, worked out in the second half of the nineteenth century as briar replaced clay and meerschaum for everyday smoking. Bending the shank and stem downward, as this one is bent, brings the bowl closer to the jaw and changes how the pipe sits both in the hand and in a rack - a bent billiard rests on its heel and the underside of the stem, rather than balancing bowl-up the way a straight billiard does, and the smoke travels a longer, curved path from tobacco to lip. The oval shank is a departure from the round-shank billiard most collectors picture first: the mortise and the stem's tenon both have to be shaped to match the oval rather than turned to a round stock size, which is more work at the lathe and leaves a shank that reads differently in the hand and in profile. The stem itself is cut to a saddle profile - flat across the top and bottom where it meets the shank, rather than tapering smoothly away from it - and finished with a fishtail bit, the flared, forked end that has been standard on briar pipes since early in the twentieth century. A fishtail spreads the bite surface across two flat prongs instead of concentrating it at a single point, which is part of why the style has stayed popular on stems meant to be clenched.

At 135mm overall, with a bowl 55mm tall and a chamber roughly 20mm across and 50mm deep, this pipe carries a substantial charge of leaf. A smoker loading it to the rim is looking at a considerably longer smoke than a standard billiard of two-thirds the volume, and the wider bowl noted here, 45mm across, gives some insulation against the heat building up over a long burn.

Finish and grain: the briar is finished smooth and stained; for the exact shade and grain figure, the photographs are the better reference than any description of them here. A smooth finish leaves the sanded surface of the block exposed under the stain rather than covering it with texture, so whatever grain the briar carried - straight run, flame, or birdseye - shows through the color instead of being hidden. That is also why fill work and grain quality matter more on a smooth-finished pipe than on a blasted or rusticated one: on a smooth pipe there is nowhere for either to hide.

THE MARKS
- CHERRY HILL, stamped on the shank

Condition: This is a pre-smoked pipe in good overall condition. Tiny darkening shows at the rim. Faint scratches and small dents are present in the stain around the bowl.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 135mm (5.4") - bowl height 55mm (2.2") - bowl width 45mm (1.8") - bowl depth 50mm (2.0") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - weight 2.4 oz - 9mm filter

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

SKU: 378