WWII Phase: Difference between revisions

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In mid-1941, during the infamous Luftwaffe Blitz bombing of London, the Alfred Dunhill store (and many others in the surrounding area) were bombed and almost totally destroyed. The restoration was not fully completed until 1953. A popular piece of lore from that period is that Dunhill employees called Sir. Winston Churchill at 4:00 a.m. to ensure him that his private collection of cigars housed in the store's humidifier had been transferred safely out of danger. As seen in the image to the right, Henry Dunhill continued to sell pipes among the rubble and ruins of his shop. An example of his remarkable resiliency.

Alfred Henry Dunhill was appointed as president in 1928 by his father, a position he held until 1961. He then decided to leave the company and transferred his presidency to his sister, Mary Dunhill. Alfred Henry Dunhill passed away ten years later (in 1971) at age 75.

In another rare image (left), courtesy of our friend Jonathan Guss, we have a clipping of a magazine that says:  

<blockquote><q>Mr. Alfred H. Dunhill holding a fragment from the wreckage of the shop in Duke Street, St. Jame's in London, that was founded by his father. '''''Tobacco''''' in February told the romantic story of the shop which "a spacious, and gracious, place of bright, light woods and beveled glass"  was ruined by Hitler's airmen in a night raid.</q></blockquote>

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The Second World War was a difficult time. Rationing due to the war was so drastic that Dunhill suffered from the scarcity of raw material until the beginning of the 1950s, several years into the post-war period.

Dunhill published catalogs annually, even during the First World War with each catalog being more elegant than the last. There were no catalogs between 1940 and 1950. however, with the exception of two. These were catalogs of "gifts", distributed in North America circa 1943, and in Great Britain at the end of the 1940s.

According to John Loring, few pipes (and mostly uninteresting) were produced by Dunhill during the 1940s. Italian Briar for smooth pipes was extremely scarce, and Algerian Briar (used in sandblasts) was just slightly more available. Likewise, vulcanite for stems was either rationed or forbidden, so that many, if not most of the pipes produced during the war were equipped with horn stems (horn is a very comfortable material, but is easily cracked).

<center>'''About Nomenclature'''</center>

Loring defends a hypothesis in his article called [[A Hypothetical WWII Pipe]], in which he considers that during this period the following nomenclature was used:

No date code or any other nomeclature, like the inner tube, for example. According to the available historiography, the 1341418/20 patent begins to appear in 1920, almost always followed by another patent, as an example: PATENT MARCH.9.15 1341418/20. In rare cases it appeared alone. We recently had access to a pipe bought from that period (unsmoked!), perfectly aligned with Loring's hypothesis. Take special attention to the flyer that states: <q>'''Arrived Safely - Thanks to Sea Power'''</q> and that reminds us of the war.

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[[User:Yang|Yang]] ([[User talk:Yang|talk]]) 08:11, 12 December 2019 (CST)