Merchant Service: Bing Crosby's Slender-Stemmed Billiard

Merchant Service is a British pipe brand founded in London in the 1930s by Herbert Merchant, one that made its name in the interwar years. Rather than a wide range of shapes, the brand is remembered for a single silhouette: a small-bowled billiard with a long, pencil-thin stem.

Today this proportion is linked in the community with the name of Bing Crosby; makers and factories alike have listed the same line in their own catalogs under names like "Bing" or "Bing's Favourite."

The Early London Years

Merchant Service Ltd. made its pipes in London; surviving pieces are usually stamped "MERCHANT SERVICE" and "LONDON MADE," alongside a shape number. Although the catalog included classic forms familiar from the English and French traditions, the brand's reputation was built on the slender-stemmed billiard.

Herbert Merchant died in 1944, yet production continued into the mid-century. Records indicate the firm later passed into the hands of Holland Penny Limited, with the brand rights eventually transferring to Imperial Tobacco. Sources do not give precise dates or the exact order of these two transitions.