CHARATAN’S Make Supreme

England, 1960s

We offer Charatan’s pipes quite regularly. Charatan’s Belvedere, Charatan’s Perfection and Special pipes were offered for your attention. There were also some of lower Charatan’s Make models. Today we are going to expand a little the range and level of Charatan’s pipes at our site.

As you might know the most expensive and luxury Charatan’s pipes were made without any regards to catalogues and without any respects to shape numbers. Therefore, these high level pipes don’t have any numbers at all. The most experienced carvers made these pipes following to the grain and to own understanding of a voice of briar. There were four highest grades: Coronation, Achievement, Royal Achievement and Crown Achievement. In times, when pipes hardly started breaking a psychological barrier of $100, the listed extraordinary ones did cost from $1000 to $2500. 

Charatan’s did make even more exclusive pipes. But in this case we can only trust someone’s impressions: such gems in the crown like the “Charatan’s Summa Cum Laude” (“with the greatest honor”) are extremely rare – just a few pipes were made and they weren’t sold officially. According to one legend, the first “Summa Cum Laude” was carved by Ruben Charatan personally and presented to Hermann Lane, the new Charatan’s owner. You understand that was the highly serious case and such present was really corresponding to this case.

And of course, the highest grade available in catalogues and stamped (usually) with shape numbers were “Supreme” pipes. We just need to remark that a) the “Supreme” pipes were made during the family era as well and therefore theirs dating requires much more attention than usual; and b) many of Supreme pipes were carved by leading artisans, consequently such pipes didn’t obtain shape numbers either. And our today’s pipe is also one of these “unnumbered” ones.

The pipe markings are “CHARATAN’S MAKE \ LONDON ENGLAND \SUPREME”. The length is 13.5 cm, bowl’s hight is 4.2 cm. External and internal diameters of the bowl are 3.5 cm and 2.1 cm. The depth is 3.3 cm and this pipe weights 23 gr. Briar, vulcanite stem, no filter. The chamber has been protected with a break-in coat.