Demuth and Dunhill: Two Paths Crossing on Fifth Avenue

The Demuth—Dunhill connection is one of the unresolved questions in American pipe history: in the first quarter of the twentieth century, was there a genuine rivalry between New York's homegrown giant William Demuth & Company and London's Alfred Dunhill, or did the two firms' paths simply cross on the same avenue?

The question was laid out in orderly fashion in 2023 by Ben Rapaport, a researcher working on tobacco objects (tobacciana). No correspondence or contract has been found directly linking the two companies; what exists is a string of events falling in the same years, and the similar fate of two great private collections.

The Two Firms

William Demuth & Company was referred to in the trade journals of its day as the world's largest pipe manufacturer. Its founder, William (Wilhelm C.) Demuth, emigrated from Germany; according to the record, after years as a pipe importer in New York he moved into his own production in 1862, eventually adding canes, zinc figures, and the cigar-store figures that stood outside tobacconists' shops to his catalog. The factory was in Queens, the showroom in Manhattan. The WDC letters set inside an inverted triangle became the firm's stamp; Wellington and Milano were its best-known briar lines. Management passed to the founder's brother, Leopold Demuth, in 1911.

Alfred Dunhill (1872-1959) took over his father's business in 1893, entered the pipe trade in 1904 by designing a windshield pipe for motorists, and opened his tobacconist's shop on Duke Street in 1907. The white dot on the mouthpiece came into use in 1912. Dunhill pipes first entered the American market through an importer's agency; the firm's own New York branch opened in the early 1920s, according to the record in 1921.