Smoking pipe.
Alfred Dunhill Shell
Great Britain, London.
First half of the 20th century
Alfred Dunhill Firm
Briar, ebony

Gift to I. V. Stalin for the 70th anniversary of his birth. The donator is unknown, but it could be Winston Churchill – a connoisseur and owner of the world’s best smoking pipes. The Museum’s collection contains several exclusive English Dunhill pipes from the category of the most famous pipes at all times: Nice Hill (the highest quality); Shell (the sign of high-quality briar, introduced by Dunhill in 1917, DRR (direct flame); A (briar of the highest quality). These indexes on the pipes indicate the age of the material they were made of. Dunhill pipes are made of perennial briar. Briar is a dense tree-like growth between the root and trunk of a shrub of the heathy family (Erica Arborea), native to the Mediterranean. This material is heat-resistant, hard, durable, resistant to tobacco, and easy to process. In addition, the briar texture is very beautiful.

Old briar is valued: the bush must be at least 50 years old, and if its age is one hundred years, the price increases many times. In a pipe made of a hundred-year-old briar, “souring” is practically excluded; i.e. when smoking resins and other harmful residues are not absorbed by wood, and such products serve extremely long. The brand mark of Dunhill pipes is a white ivory dot on the mouthpiece.

The history of this trademark is prosaic: initially, the dot was placed on the top of the mouthpiece to avoid errors during assembly. Later, it became an inseparable part of “Dunhill” pipe – a peculiar sign of quality.