BEWLAY Extra freehand
England, 1960-70s
One of the most famous English tobacco shops, Bewlay & Co. Ltd was founded in 1870 at 49 W. Strand, London by Jewish family Elkan, who emigrated from the Netherlands. On the early stage the business was positioned as a tobacco retailer, Bewlay was one of the first, who started to sell cigars. Of course, in the beginning of the XX century briar pipes had become very popular and Bewlay’s offered a number of models made by Barling, Charatan’s, Loewe, Sasieni and Orlik. Bewlay’s was among the first companies exported pipes to the USA. Some admirers claim that Bewlay’s gave Joel Sasieni his start (the Sasieni family was from Jewish immigrants too, lived in the same area and it seems attended at the same synagogue). In 1937 the family business was sold to Salmon & Gluckstein, already being controlled by Imperial Tobacco. The shop chain was closed in 1980s. Our today’s pipe was made by Charatan’s in 1960’s. This Charatan’s freehand shape can’t be confused with any other manufacturer.
The pipe markings are “Bewlay \ EXTRA \ LONDON MADE”, “REJECT”. The length is 17.1 cm (6.73″), bowl’s height is 5.5 cm (2.16″). External diameter of the bowl is 3.5 cm (1.38″), internal diameter is 2.1 cm (0.83″). The depth is 4.5 cm (1.77″) and this pipe weights 37 gr. Briar, vulcanite stem, no filter. The chamber has regular smoked wear not excluding some scratches and roughness, but we didn’t identify any critical issues. The rim has some light darkening. The stem is newly made of the fresh piece of vulcanite, so we can consider the pipe as a “partially unsmoked” :-).
