Oldenkott Piccadilly Smooth Straight Billiard Estate Pipe - German Made Vulcanite Stem

The shank carries a single stamp: OLDENKOTT PICCADILLY. No shape number follows it, no grade dot, no country-of-origin marking - just the maker's name and a model line that seldom turns up on the estate market.

This is a smooth, straight billiard from Oldenkott, a German firm whose own pipe manufacture began in 1932. The bowl is short and compact in proportion, a chubby-bodied take on the standard billiard, fitted with a tapered black vulcanite stem and an open fishtail bit. No filter is fitted.

Oldenkott's history runs back well before its pipes. The firm traces to a tobacco dynasty with roots in 1740-1760, split between the Henricus Oldenkott line at Rees and the Hermannus Oldenkott line at Ahaus, with an Amsterdam trading house recorded in an 1918 print as "Herms, Oldenkott und Zonen in Ahaus mit einem Zweiggeschaft in Amsterdam." In 1838 August Kersten of Rees bought the Heinric Oldenkott factories at Elten and Weesp, building one of Germany's largest tobacco houses. Oldenkott Knaster was smoked by Kruger in exile, and his likeness appeared on the firm's packets around 1901. Pipes under the Oldenkott name were advertised nationally in Berlin from 1926 - years before the firm made its own. In 1929 it bought the Hermann-Oldenkott factories at Ahaus and Neuss, and in 1932 it began turning its own pipes rather than only selling tobacco to smoke in them.

By the postwar decades Oldenkott stood as Germany's second-largest pipemaker, behind only VAUEN. Its TURBO line, motor-block-turned and finished in a silver-grey lacquer, is sometimes credited with influencing later Porsche Design work, though the actual Porsche Design pipes were made by Elbert Gubbels, a separate maker entirely. Niemeijer of the Netherlands bought the company in 1972, and tobacco production stopped altogether in 1974, leaving pipes as the sole product. The Kersten family bought the pipe business back in 1987; the factory closed in 1992. In 2012 the Oldenkott marks were acquired by Alexander Strahnz of Cologne, and pipes bearing the name are again being produced, this time in Italy, generally in smaller bowl sizes and slimmer shanks than the German-era output.

THE MARKS
- OLDENKOTT PICCADILLY, stamped on the shank. No shape number, grade dot, or country stamp is present on this example.

The bowl is a straight billiard built short and full-bodied rather than tall and slender - a proportion collectors sometimes call chubby, where bowl height and width sit closer together than on a standard billiard. The shank is straight and unbanded, meeting a tapered vulcanite stem with an open fishtail slot at the bit, the traditional cut for a pipe smoked without a filter. Held in the hand, the shorter bowl sits closer to the fingers than a tall billiard would, and on the rack it presents a stockier silhouette than a slim-shanked sibling in the same catalog.

The bowl is finished smooth, the briar cut and stained to let the grain show rather than hiding it under a textured surface. A smooth finish asks more of the block to begin with: there is no sandblast or rustication to disguise a pit, a fill, or an uneven patch of grain, so the wood has to hold up under close inspection. The precise color and figure of this particular block are best read from the photographs.

Condition: pre-smoked, graded good overall. Faint scratches are present across the briar surface. The rim shows slight darkening. The vulcanite stem carries very light bite marks near the bit. No cracks, fills, or repairs are reported on this pipe.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 145mm (5.8") - bowl height 58mm (2.3") - bowl width 35mm (1.5") - chamber depth 47mm (1.9") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - weight 1.8 oz

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

SKU: 141