HARDCASTLE’S Camden 54

England, 1930s

While the hands are busy with a restoration (and sometimes a reanimation) of the next pipe, the mind is busy with… random things indeed.  Well, it’s almost not busy and can be used for anything you prefer: to listen to a music, to watch a film, to improve your English (Spanish, Hindi, Hebrew), to try to penetrate into on-line course on cryptography. Or just to play with memories and reflections.

The work with this Hardcastle roused to reflections about templates and stereotypes of human behavior. Not of a global scale, but at least  examples of one country, on the things familiar and clear.

There are some bricks or the whole blocks in the mind which define consciousness, and respectively behavior. For example the block “it’s my own” is something that does not belong to a company, nor to a state, nor a tenant who returns just a few coins a year for a hectare. “It’s my own” is my household, my kitchen garden, my bike (well my “Lexus” if it’s more clear). That everything “my own” should be shining, well working and highly profitable. Why so? Perhaps first of all it’s for the self-satisfaction and the harmony.

Besides that there is one more block – “what will people think”. So if something isn’t in a proper order –  it will be not only a question of personal discomfort, but also the feeling of this person in society. It is difficult to accuse someone that his hens steel your wheat if your fence isn’t painted, or your yard isn’t brushed up, or your car (your bike, your tank) isn’t washed. It’s not an aspiration to an ideal, but the motive to keep some level of behavior and success what allows you to communicate with other people as equal.

And so, reflecting further, seemingly, English family business in the our favorite area stayed under the influence of the same, or similar motives. As far you may remember Orlik, Hardcastle, Ben Wade, Charatan’s, Fribourg & Treyer – all of them at a stage of the “family business” shown the highest quality standards, meticulousness in selection of raw materials, all details are studied to trifles. Products of their activity are appreciated in decades even more and are still in demand and popularity. Because it was a pipe from own (family) factory of sir Henry (Ruben, or Edmund in our case). No one wanted all Devonshire to gossip that sir Henry sells pipes with numerous putties and made of a unseasoned briar! But once someone else possessed this manufacture, a capitalist with the serial production… Yes, Lane’s Charatan’s is extremely  remarkable, but such a motor like Herman Lane is born once a century. 

Well, there is the pipe from sir Edmund Hardcastle (more precisely, from his family business, still completely independent), made before 1946, smoked very moderately and remained in just an excellent condition. The pipe markings are “HARDCATLE’S \ BRITISH MADE \ CAMDEN”, “MADE IN LONDON \ ENGLAND”, “54”. The length is 12.3 cm, bowl’s hight is 4.5 cm. External and internal diameters of the bowl are 3.3 cm and 1.9 cm. The depth is 3.8 cm and this pipe weights 29 gr. Briar, vulcanite stem, inner tube.