Mountbatten

Mountbatten is often refered to as a Charatan second, but apparently the Mountbattan pipes were made by Charatan apprentices. So while they are not Charatans, they are perhaps on their way to becoming Charatans. A second would tend to be a pipe with a deficiency (in material or workmanship), a Mountbatten would perhaps be closer to a Charatan in quality.

The following is originally from a pipes.org forum post by Bill Ramsey.

“Friends, after 40 years of nosing around pipes, what I have gleened is this: Charatan sold its seconds under private labels and later acquired the English rights for Ben Wade for just this purpose. Mountbatten, on the other hand was not a “second”(in that there was some physical deformity in the pipe) but rather a first line production from Charatan’s apprentice program. Each Charatan carver might have four or six apprentices at any one time of various skill levels. As they improved and started cutting pipes themselves, these pipes had to move… thus the Mountbatten. These were made on Charatan tooling with Charatan materials and teaching. Bear in mind that there was a high attrition rate and , perhaps, one apprentice in nine or ten made it to cutting their own bowls much less a Charatan carver. This is why you see more Charatans than Mountbattens on the market. You’re never going to put your kid through college by selling one but you’ve got a day to day workhorse of the first order. Good luck and happy puffing.”

Pretty interesting! This is information comes to us from an interesting post on rebornpipes.com about restoring the pips bellow.

• Restored Mountbatten pipes, courtesy rebornpipes.com
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