(Courtesy of www.pipedia.org)

Dating Charatan Pipes... (by Ivy Ryan)

Dating Charatans
Charatans are difficult to date in that Charatan's guarantee was open ended. Unlike Dunhill, which dated its pipes so as to enforce its one-year guarantee, Charatan refused to worry about when a particular pipe was made. A Charatan pipe was replaced if it failed-no matter how old it was or how it had been treated-so there was no need to date the pipes. The way to date Charatan pipes is to be aware of the minor changes that were made during the years that Charatan was in business. With a bit of information as to the dates of some markings
and stem changes, I introduce this approximate dating guide. A lot of these dates are going to be "about" or "approximately" and I am only able to cover the times from the mid 1950s to the sale by Dunhill to J.B. Russell circa 1988. My information is approximate because I do not have access to factory records. I am working from memory, stories I heard at the Prescott Street factory, and pipes I have owned over the years. The keys for dating post-war to 1960-era Charatan pipes are the presence or absence of serifs (i.e., short lines stemming from and at an angle to the upper and lower ends of a letter) on the CP stamp, the presence or absence of the Lane â€oeL― on tapered and early saddle bit stems, and the presence or absence of the renowned Double Comfort bit. After 1960, the dates may be determined by the stamping on the right side of the pipe. (Note: I was a 20-odd-year-old, pipe-smoking woman when I hung around Charatans. I was not a researcher, though I sure wish I had been. I have been told since that all pre-WW II records went up when the â€oeold― factory was destroyed in the bombing, but I was just not interested. I really regret that now. I let a lot of history go, but all I can say is that I was younger then.)
The Lane Limited florid "L" is on almost all Charatans imported into the United States
from somewhere after WW II until 1988. (Lane bought Charatan in 1960, but it began importing Charatan pipes in 1955, when it got the contract from Wally Frank, who had been
importing them.) If the pipe in question has a tapered or saddle bit without the "L" then it is probably very old, possibly pre-war. Or it may not have been stamped. This did happen, and no one knows how often, but I think it was fairly infrequent. Pre-1955 Charatans-possibly back to the beginning-had pronounced serifs on the CP stamp and either a taper or saddle bit. Pipes made in 1955 or later had the same types of bits but without the serifs on the CP. The block letter "FH" marking, for "Free Hand" on either side of the stem was used from the 1940s or so until about 1958. The problem is that all pipes were not stamped "FH" even though all the pipes were actually hand made.
The block letter "MADE BY HAND" stamp on the right side or bottom of the shank came into use in early 1958 to replace the "FH" stamp and was used until late 1965.
The letters were about one millimeter tall.
The Double Comfort bit came into use in 1960 and is still in use. The Double Comfort bit looks like a fairly thick saddle bit, with another saddle cut into it about 3/4 of an inch from the button, which is the technical term for the raised and rounded end of a stem. The original design was supposed to produce a strong stem with a thin bite. It was also supposed to be a distinctive point about the brand, giving instant product recognition. The Double Comfort bit was probably the largest mistake that Charatan could have made. Bit shape and bite comfort ranged from excellent to terrible, with nothing to base a buyer's choice on but the width of the bit. The narrow versions were generally very comfortable, but the wide versions varied from thin enough to be comfortable to thick as a plank. This bit design probably led to the company's failure, because a person could no longer count on Charatan for a comfortable pipe to smoke. A consumer once bitten by a poor bit will be twice shy of buying another. After 1960, Charatan didn't make any taper bits unless for special orders. They did make pipes with "normal" saddle bits. These pipes will have an "X"-with or without a line under or beside it-to indicate that the pipe in question was "supposed" to have a saddle bit and not a Double Comfort bit. I refer to this marking as the "X line" mark.
That mark will look like this:
####X (with the #### being some number, such as 4025).
In late 1965, the right-side stamping changed to a three-line set of stamps. The first and second lines read "MADE BY HAND" and "IN" respectively in block letters a bit larger (2 millimeters) than the earlier version. The third line reads "City of London" in script. This marking was only used for about six months and looked like this:
MADE BY HAND
IN
City of London
The next stamp used was the all-script, three-line "Made by Hand" "in" "City of London". This stamp was used from near the end of 1965 up until Dunhill took control of
the company in 1979. It looked like this:
Made by Hand
In
City of London.