Medico Standard Select Briar Sandblast Straight Billiard Vulcanite Stem Fishtail Estate Pipe

Medico built its name on a filter. This one does not have it.

This is a Medico Standard Select Briar: a sandblast finished straight billiard, vulcanite tapered stem, fishtail mouthpiece, no filter fitted.

Bowl: briar
Stem: vulcanite
Mouthpiece: fishtail
Filter: none
Stamped: "Medico Standard Select Briar"

Medico traces to S.M. Frank & Co, which had Sam Frank selling pipes from 1900, and which later worked with Ferdinand Feuerbach to produce the Royal DeMuth and Hesson Guard Milano lines. The Medico brand itself arrived in 1933, launched together with an absorbent paper filter - a system built on a patent application Minton filed in 1932, refined and granted as patent number 1,967,585 in 1934. That filter is the thing Medico is best known for across its catalog. This particular pipe, stamped Standard Select Briar, was sold without one: a straight airway rather than a filtered chamber.

In 1955, S.M. Frank acquired the Kaywoodie brands; Medico continued under its own name unaffected. In 1966 the company developed Brylon, a briar-and-resin composite, and moved several of its lines onto it to hold down cost while its briar lines continued in parallel. Medico pipes also reached buyers in England through Cadogan and Oppenheimer Pipe. The company's later catalog splits along that same line: briar in names like Silver Crest, Premier, Bold Rebel, Kensington and Windsor; Brylon in names like Lancer, Apollo, Standard, Varsity, Conqueror, Medalist, Cavalier and V.F.Q. The word Standard appears on both sides of that ledger across the company's history, which is one more reason to read what is actually stamped on a given pipe rather than assume from the name alone what it is made of. Here the stamp settles it: Select Briar.

THE MARKS
- Shank stamp, "Medico Standard Select Briar"

A straight billiard is the reference shape against which most other bowl forms are described: a cylindrical-to-slightly-conical bowl set at a right angle to a straight shank, with the stem continuing that same line out to the bit. Nothing about the profile is meant to surprise the hand holding it, and that is why it became the default teaching form for new pipe smokers and the default comparison point collectors use when describing anything else. On this example the bowl stands 46mm tall with a 35mm outside diameter, and the chamber running down through it measures 20mm across and 38mm deep - a tall chamber relative to the bowl's own outside width, giving a longer column of tobacco than a short, wide bowl of similar overall size would hold. The vulcanite stem tapers from shank to button and ends in a fishtail slot, a bit shape cut with two shallow lobes rather than a single round hole, spreading the draw across a wider opening at the button.

Sandblasting is a finishing process that removes the softer summer growth of the briar grain by force, leaving the harder winter growth standing proud as ridges across the bowl's surface. It works because briar, like other woods, lays down denser and softer growth in alternating bands each year, and the two bands erode at different rates under the same treatment. What is left afterward is the wood's own structure, raised rather than painted or stained onto it, and it is why a sandblast pipe reads by touch as much as by sight. Finish and grain detail beyond that: see the photographs.

Condition: the seller reports this pipe as pre-smoked and in good condition. No cracks, fills, or repairs are noted.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 150mm - bowl height 46mm - bowl width 35mm - chamber diameter 20mm - chamber depth 38mm - weight 34g

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

SKU: 180