Kaywoodie: Difference between revisions

'''Kaywoodie''' was the name a pipe offered by [[Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy]] Company (KBB), first appearing in February of 1919. The Dinwoodie pipe, also by KBB, appeared in November of 1919. Sometime before 1924, the Dinwoodie had been discontinued and the Kaywoodie name was beginning to be used on an extensive line of pipes that ultimately would be the name of the company. The origin of the name Kaywoodie is a combination of the K from Kaufmann and wood, as in briar. Not much is known of the original KBB company other than it was started in 1851 by the German born Kaufmann brothers when they opened a small pipe shop in the Bowery section of New York City. In the back room of this shop, they made their first pipes. From this meager beginning, the Kaywoodie name and organization was to emerge.

[[File:Kaywoodie Silverleaf.jpg|thumb|KBB Silerleaf, courtesy Doug Valitchka]][[File:KB&B Drinkless Babe Ruth.jpg|thumb|Babe Ruth Drinkless Kaywoodie Ad]]When one of the men from the New York office got "gold fever", he carried a large supply of pipes with him to California that he sold along the way. This early "national distribution" did much to build the reputation of KBB. By the late 1800's, branches of KBB were opened in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and St. Louis with family and friends acting as agents. The trademarks, for the inlaid cloverleaf and the cloverleaf with the KBB initials inside, were issued in 1881. KBB's pipes became more popular and were in constant demand by the end of the century. Orders were streaming back east and KBB needed to move to larger manufacturing facilities. By 1915 the move was made to larger facilities in the old Union Hill section of Union City, New Jersey. The salesroom offices were located at 33 East 17th. Street, New York. When the Kaywoodie pipe was first introduced by KBB it came with a hand cut rubber mouthpiece fitted with an aluminum Inbore Tube. This device was to "assure a clean, cool smoke." Other KBB pipes such as Ambassador, Heatherby and Melrose also had the Inbore tube. The early Drinkless Kaywoodies from 1924 through 1931 had push bit stems. In 1931, after three years of research, the new Drinkless Kaywoodies with the synchro-stem, (threaded drinkless screw-in mouthpiece) were introduced. The drinkless attachment was advertised as cooling the smoke from 850 degrees in the bowl to 82 degrees when it entered the mouth. By the mid 1930's, all Kaywoodie's came with the screw mounted Drinkless attachment. (Export Kaywoodies, available briefly from 1950-1955, had push bit stems and were available in all the same shapes and finishes as the drinkless versions.)

Again, demand for KBB pipes and especially Kaywoodie prompted another move for both the manufacturing facilities and the corporate offices. In 1930 the corporate office moved into the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue in New York. By 1935, the manufacturing operations moved from Union City to 6400 Broadway in West New York, New Jersey which, at the time, was touted as the largest pipe making facility in the world. At the height of production, there were 500 employees producing up to 10,000 pipes per day.

The corporate offices were relocated in 1936 to the International Building, Rockefeller Center, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York. The invitation to visit the new office reads, "Kaywoodie is now on display at the world's most famous address - Rockefeller Center. Here Kaywoodie takes its place among the leaders of industry and commerce." The move to Rockefeller Center coincided with The Kaywoodie Company's emergence as a subsidiary of KBB. All of the pipes manufactured by KBB including the Yello-Bole line were also on display here. By 1938 Kaywoodie had opened an office in London to meet worldwide demand. Kaywoodie of London was jointly owned with another famous pipemaker, Comoy's of London.

Reiss-Premier Pipe Co. was also a pipe making concern that was part of the Kaywoodie organization. Pipes made by this company had the pipes name stamped inside an elongated diamond on the shank of the pipe. KBB, Kaywoodie and Reiss-Premier were all located in the West New York manufacturing plant. Rudolph Hirsch, the first president of The Kaywoodie Company from 1936 until at least 1950, was also president of Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy when Kaywoodie was formed and was a vice president of Reiss-Premier.

During World War II, getting briar imported into this country was not easy. Italian and French briar couldn't be had until very late in the war. Kaywoodie was able to import 1400 5-gross bags of briar (about 1,000,000 blocks) out of North Africa in 1943 after the German army was defeated there. Early in 1941, Kaywoodie embarked on a project of domestically grown briar wood, called Mission Briar or manzanita. This wood is botanically the same as Mediterranean briar. The Pacific Briarwood Company, a KBB subsidiary, began harvesting the burl type wood growing on the slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. However, the smoking characteristics were not quite as good and the project was abandoned after the war. After the war, pipe production returned to new heights with many new pipe smokers coming out of the armed services.