The Briar Trade: Makers, Manufacturers, and Brands That Time Forgot: Difference between revisions

In the final analysis, whatever results from such an endeavor, there will remain an historical omission. However fact-filled this database might turn out to be—if it is undertaken—it will never be truly complete, because a substantial segment of this cottage industry, here and abroad, represents hundreds of no-name master craftsmen, semi-skilled workers and apprentices who produced briars ‘to order’ that bore the incised stamp or trademark of various retail shops, or prepped the pipes for their finishing touches to be executed at other pipe companies. Those craftsmen went to their graves without an iota of recognition, names never to be included in the annals of the briar trade. It’s a sad, sobering, even sorrowful segment of the industry’s inattention and indifference, unless or until something is done to fix it. The aforementioned notwithstanding, as a parting salute to all those unknowns, paraphrasing General MacArthur’s address to Congress on April 19, 1951, like old soldiers, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of those who worked in the briar trade so many years ago simply faded away. And their good, borrowed from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, was buried “...with their bones.”