A Conversation Piece: "The Most Expensive Pipe": Difference between revisions

What are the measures of the merit for “the most expensive pipe”? How is it gauged? Is it determined by its age? Is it determined by the medium, e.g., briar, meerschaum, porcelain, etc.? Is it based on the realized price at a public auction, i.e., by how much someone paid? Is it solely, wholly, and totally in the eyes of the beholder, because it is a singular work from a well-known, respected pipe craftsman? Is it because it once belonged to a rich and famous person? Well, in 2017, Christie’s, London, sold an Albert Einstein briar billiard at a realized price of GBP 52,500 ($71,360); the House estimate was just GBP 5,000-8,000. Four years later, in September 2021, Remarkable Rarities, Boston, auctioned Einstein’s collection of nine rather ordinary briars and a wood pipe rack that were found in his Princeton, New Jersey, home sold for $125,000. High bidding in these two auctions was certainly not because these pipes were valuable, but because of name recognition. When Julien’s Auctions of Beverly Hills in June 2018 offered a lot of three briars from the estate of the comedian Jerry Lewis—a Dunhill Shell Briar with a 14-kt gold fitting (stamped B118 33), a K&P Tankard and a Chacom lady’s pipe, the House estimate was $200–$300; the winning bid was $640. Julien’s also sold the property of Hugh Hefner six months later; Lot 312 (of 838 lots of Hugh’s stuff) was an unbranded briar with the iconic Playboy rabbit logo embossed on the mouthpiece; the estimate was $2,000–$3,000. Would you believe a final price of $11,520? A year later, Julian’s was at it again, auctioning the Bilbo Baggins pipe that Ian Holm used in “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” that was estimated to fetch between $100,000 and $120,000; it sold for $28,200. Not bad considering that this prop was certainly not a briar, and it did not belong to anyone rich or famous, yet it exceeded Hugh’s briar by more than twice.  

The Gallery shuttered in 1988, and the pipe’s disposition was unknown until it resurfaced on August 8, 2009 in the “August Great Estates Auction,” hosted by Rago Arts and Auction Center, Lambertsville, New Jersey; the estimate was $3,000-$5,000, and it sold for $3,000! It’s fair to say, 25 years later, it had lost its grandeur as “the world’s most expensive pipe.”   

Another Turkish meerschaum pipe is mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records. In the 1978 issue: “The most expensive smoker’s pipe is an intricately carved meerschaum pipe, marketed by CAO Meerschaums of Nashville, Tennessee, which sells in New York City for $8,000.” The 1980 issue mentions a “Most Valuable Pipe,” … “flying horseman,” … “marketed in San Francisco for $10,000.” According to “Hot cigar and pipe hobby leads entrepreneur to prosperity” (Nashville Business Journal, May 10, 1998): “He [Ozgener, CEO of C.A.O. Inc.] has more than 1,000 pipes in his collection, including the famous Flying Dutchman pipe which appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for years as the most expensive pipe in the world valued at $10,000.” Then, “’The Guinness Book of World Records’ lists the most valuable meerschaum pipe at $50,000, owned by Cano Ozgener, Jun 12, 2018” (eileenandmorgan.com). I could not find a picture of this pipe, and I cannot explain the disparity in price.  

[[File:WDC-ColumbusMeer-Postcard.jpg|thumb|left|Obverse side of the WDC postcard, courtesy Gene Umberger]]Where is it today? The story is rather convoluted. The American Tobacco Company, Richmond, Virginia, acquired the Demuth collection of some 250 pipes, the “Half-and-Half Collection,” in 1940. In 1957, the collection was donated to the Valentine Museum in Richmond. After a fire in 1963, the collection was placed in storage. In 1991 the Museum sold it to Austria Tabak (AT), Vienna, Austria, adding to the AT Museum’s extensive collection of antiquarian pipes and related smoking utensils. The Columbus pipe was the centerpiece attraction in October 1992, when AT celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. In 2001, the AT Museum was shuttered and, in 2002, most of the museum’s inventory were auctioned; however, it retained a quantity of choice pipes and related artifacts. In 2009, to celebrate 225 years of AT—10 of which were now as a subsidiary of Japan Tobacco International (JTI)—Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) sponsored “Nicotiana. A Cultural History of Tobacco,” an exhibition with the Columbus pipe as the centerpiece once again. It’s never been stated as to how the original $50,000 valuation was derived, and it has not been offered for sale by JTI, so it’s impossible to know how much it could command today.

[[File:GustavFischerSr-BunkerHillMeerschaum.jpg|thumb|400px|Gustav Fischer Sr. carved Bunker Hill Meerschaum, courtesy Brandywine River Museum]]

Another very famous antique meerschaum pipe is in private hands. It is the high-relief-carved Battle of Bunker Hill, after John Trumbull’s famous oil on canvas, “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775” (1786), carved by Gustav Fischer Sr., of Boston. It is a remarkable sculpture, a monumental two-pound, 33” l. work of art with 31 high-relief-carved figures, three American flags, and one British flag, a pipe carved over a period of four years; it was finished sometime in 1905. “Remarkable Skill Shown in Meerschaum Carving” (The Boston Traveler, December 22, 1906) placed a value of $40,000 on it. ($40,000 is equivalent to about $1.22 million today.) At a time in the 1990s, when asked if it were for sale, the owner, a descendant of Gustav, suggested $100,000 … knowing that there would be no willing takers. What would it command today? It could easily exceed $50,000, but would there be a buyer?

[[File:Jpse-hLra,,er-MarrigeOfPrincessLouisee.jpg|thumb|400px|left|Marriage of Princes Louise in 1871,” attributed to Joseph Krammer, Vienna, c. 1871, courtesy piguet.com]]The bold, online statement: “Museum-grade antique meerschaum pipes go for $2,000 to $10,000” is nowhere near accurate—many fine-quality antique meerschaums can be had for far less than $2,000—and it is certainly not helpful guidance for any pipe collector, especially a neophyte. What follows is a real-world example from late 2020. This high-relief-carved meerschaum pipe, the “Marriage of Princes Louise in 1871,” attributed to Joseph Krammer, Vienna, c. 1871, 11” x 18,” was in the Alfred Dunhill Antique Pipe Collection. It was auctioned by Christie’s, London, in May 2004, with a realized price of 26,400 pounds (almost $50,000). Sixteen years later, it reappeared in a December 2020 auction at Piguet, Geneva, Switzerland. It sold for far less, 30,000 Swiss Francs (or $33,400), and I believe that there’s a reason. In the intervening years, the number of active, monied collectors of antique pipes has markedly shrunk, so frenetic antique pipe auction activity has declined commensurately. Visit Piguet to see many more eye-catching examples.   

Determining the most expensive wood pipe is another matter altogether. There are some accepted truths about briars, in particular, what sets them apart from mainstream pipe production. An article in the September 17, 1956 issue of Newsweek entitled “Pipe Dream” contained a photo of a Kaywoodie Presentation Collection, described as the “costliest pipe set ever marketed in the U.S.”: a walnut cabinet containing 31 pipes: 28 flawless, matched-grain briars, a carved briar, a meerschaum, and a Calabash, priced at $1,000. In the 1970s, Charatan’s top-of-the line Crown Achievement pipes were priced at $1,500, its seven-day sets were priced at $1,500. In the 1990s, some Jess Chonowitch briars sold for as much as $6,800.   

[[File:Duhill-EiffelTower.jpg|thumb|left|400px|Dunhill Eiffel Tower Pipe, courtesy alpascia.com]]Dunhill has been known for producing some rarities, such as the unusual Namiki “Two Carps” pipe, only 25 of which were produced in 2016. You can still buy one for about 20,000 Euros ($23,000). Far more fascinating is Dunhill’s extraordinary, one-of-a-kind Eiffel Tower pipe, designed by product director, Kalmon Hener, manufactured in 2015. The bowl is carved from a single block of flawless briar, the tower hand-cut from sheets of 18kt gold and embellished with 492 diamonds, 140 sapphires, 20 rubies, and a cornflower-blue 3.75-carat Sri Lankan sapphire. A cabinet decorated with an inlaid image of workers building the Eiffel Tower contains the pipe and five rare books about the Paris landmark, including volumes commissioned by Gustave Eiffel in 1900. Read more about this creature at “Extremely Limited Edition Pipes: One of One. The White Spot Eiffel Tower Pipe” (alpascia.com), and Richard Hacker, “Design Portfolio: This Is Not a Pipe,” (robbreport.com). The price is only $3.5 million. Any takers?

Although not designed for tobacco, the Chinese opium pipe is, nevertheless, a pipe, so I include the always-unpredictable, outrageous prices paid for these pipes at auction. The most recent sale of a pricey opium pipe occurred in May, 2021. In Bellman’s Fine Art Auctioneers (UK) “Interiors-Old Master, British and European Paintings, Asian Works of Art,” this 19th-century Famille rose opium pipe with an estimate of only £1,000–£1,500 realized a surprising £20,000, or about $27,250.  

Two final thoughts, the first of which should be obvious to everyone. Claims of “the most expensive” pipe circulate in the public domain, most recently on the Web, accessible to anyone with a computer or a smartphone. A public pipe auction’s realized prices are certainly concrete evidence of what bidders paid, but the House, by convention, does not normally reveal the buyer’s name. And I know that many private transactions have and will continue to occur between a pipe seller and a pipe buyer, particularly among European collectors, where both parties want to keep it that way for obvious reasons. Therefore, the pipe world may never know if there was/is/will be “the most expensive” pipe, unless such discreet transactions become public knowledge. The second thought is that, as a student of pipe history and a Web watcher on the lookout for unusual and interesting pipe stories, I believe that the topic of “the most expensive pipe” will never get much traction among collectors, no matter how much someone paid. It’s a fad that has little to no fanatic following.