LOEWE L & Co Mounted 914
England, 1960s - 1991
This wonderful and full of life canadian pipe from Loewe & Co is at the same time a very interesting and not really easy for understanding piece of smoking pipes history. The marking “London W.” specifies that the pipe has been made at family London factory in Haymarket. On the other hand silver hallmarks on a collar specify London 1991, i.e. after the acquisition of the company (what happened approximately in 1976).
Such the case is not unique for Loewe, there’s a good analysis of similar cases on pipedia.org, and there are even selections of the similar collected pipes available in the Internet. That’s very likely that Loewe’s own production could proceed some more years after the acquisition, so the bowl was made by carvers still in the same workshop on Haymarket. Or the bowl may belong to the last years before the acquisition, and the collar (and probably, the stem) were made later. In every case it’s the extremely rare collectable sample!
The pipe markings are “(L & Co) \ MOINTED”, “LOEWE \ LONDON. W. \ 914”, “N”. The length is 14.6 cm (5.75″), bowl’s height is 4.8 cm (1.89″). External diameter of the bowl is 3.4 cm (1.34″), internal diameter is 1.9 cm (0.75″). The depth is 4.2 cm (1.65″) and this pipe weights 38 gr. Briar, vulcanite stem, no filter. The air hole drilling looks slightly off center, but of course it still fitted quality control requirements on the factory.
