Pacine De Bruyere Smooth Straight Billiard Briar Pipe - Vulcanite Tapered Stem, Fishtail, No Filter, Estate

The shank reads Pacine De Bruyere. That is the whole of what is stamped on this pipe, and it is named here exactly as it appears - nothing more is claimed about the firm behind it.

This is a straight billiard in briar, smooth-finished, fitted with a tapered vulcanite stem cut to a fishtail slot. There is no filter: the draft runs straight from the chamber through the shank into the stem, unbroken by any filter housing. The seller who catalogued it describes the shape and finish as representative of the English style of pipe-making - plain, straight-shanked, no ornament beyond the wood itself.

The billiard is the oldest and most common shape in the pipe-maker's catalogue: a cylindrical bowl set at a right angle to a straight shank, the proportions worked out over more than a century of production before any single maker owned the term. A true billiard has no flare, no bend, no forward cant - the bowl sits square on the shank, the shank sits square on the stem, and the whole pipe reads as a straight line broken only by the stem's taper. That geometry is why it is often the first shape put into a new smoker's hand: nothing about it hides a flaw, and nothing about it needs explaining. What varies from maker to maker is proportion - how tall the bowl stands against how long the shank runs - and it is in that proportion, not in ornament, that a billiard's character lives.

The stem here is vulcanite, not acrylic: a rubber compound that takes a finer taper and a warmer bite against the teeth than acrylic, at the cost of oxidizing toward a brownish cast over years of handling and light exposure. It is cut with a fishtail slot rather than a round drilled aperture - the slot widens and flattens just before the button, spreading the smoke across a broader path into the mouth rather than concentrating it in one column. It is a simple, functional cut, well suited to a pipe built without a filter system, where nothing upstream is already breaking up the airflow.

Smooth finish means the briar has been left bare of blast or rustication and stained to let the grain show through rather than hidden under a heavy opaque coat. The wood is reported with faint scratches across the surface, consistent with an estate pipe that has been carried and handled rather than shelved. Under raking light a smooth finish shows every mark the wood has taken, which is the tradeoff a plain stain always makes against a rustication or sandblast: less forgiving of handling, more honest about the wood underneath.

THE MARKS
- Shank stamp: Pacine De Bruyere

Condition: catalogued as pre-smoked, in good estate condition. Faint scratches are present across the briar surface. No cracks, fills, or repairs are reported.

THE MEASUREMENTS
Length 155mm (6.2") - bowl height 45mm (1.8") - bowl width 35mm (1.4") - bowl depth 40mm (1.6") - chamber diameter 20mm (0.8") - weight 1.2 oz

Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.
SKU: 032