Oldenkott Patras Bruyere Prima 820 Smooth Churchwarden Billiard 1950s Estate Pipe

At 170mm long, this Oldenkott runs the length of a churchwarden on a straight billiard bowl, yet the whole pipe weighs in under an ounce.

Oldenkott stamped this shank Patras, Bruyere Prima, with the shape number 820. The seller describes it as a smooth-finished straight billiard worked with a long, tapered acrylic stem in the churchwarden style, fitted with a fishtail bit and no filter. The cabinet places the Bruyere Prima grade in the 1950s.

Oldenkott began as a tobacco house, not a pipe maker. The name traces to two lines, Henricus Oldenkott at Rees and Hermannus Oldenkott at Ahaus, with an Amsterdam branch recorded in an 1918 print as Herms, Oldenkott und Zonen in Ahaus mit einem Zweiggeschaft in Amsterdam. Niemeijer of the Netherlands bought the company in 1972; tobacco production stopped in 1974, leaving pipes as the sole product. The Kersten family bought the pipe business back in 1987, and it closed in 1992. This pipe's Bruyere Prima grade sits inside the postwar production years, before the Niemeijer sale.

THE MARKS
- Stamped OLDENKOTT PATRAS
- Stamped BRUYERE PRIMA
- Stamped shape number 820

The 820 is quoted here exactly as stamped; no catalogue name is assigned to it beyond what the seller has already confirmed - a straight billiard bowl carried on a long, churchwarden-length stem.

The churchwarden format puts a standard bowl at the end of a stem far longer than a sitter or pocket pipe would carry, traditionally associated with a cooler smoke and a slower, seated style, the pipe held or rested rather than clenched. Here the bowl itself reads as a straight billiard: a cylindrical, upright chamber on a straight shank, the most conservative bowl geometry in the pipe world and the one every other shape is measured against. At 43mm tall on a 31mm width, with a 37mm deep chamber, the bowl is proportioned taller than it is wide, giving a long burn down through the tobacco column rather than a shallow one. The tapered acrylic stem narrows toward a fishtail slot, which spreads the draw across a wide, flat opening rather than a single round bore - a stem cut chosen for airflow rather than for holding a filter, which this pipe does not take.

The finish is described as smooth. A smooth finish leaves the sanded briar bare of any texture treatment, relying on stain and wax alone to bring out whatever figure the block holds, in contrast to a sandblast or a rustication, which use surface texture to carry a plainer piece of wood. For the grain and color of this particular bowl, see the photographs.

Condition: The seller notes this pipe has been smoked previously but grades it mint. No fills, cracks, repairs, or oxidation are reported. The stem is described as shiny black acrylic with no damage noted.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 170mm (6.8") - bowl height 43mm (1.7") - bowl width 31mm (1.2") - chamber depth 37mm (1.5") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - weight 0.9 oz

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SKU: SKU-105