Which Is the Earliest Dunhill?

The question of the earliest Dunhill has no single answer in Dunhill collecting. It is really at least three separate questions: what is the oldest object bearing the brand's name, how precisely can pipes from before the year-code era be dated, and which is the earliest known example of a given shape line. On all three fronts, the answer keeps receding as new pieces surface.

Dunhill Before the Pipe

Alfred Dunhill was born in London in 1872. His father, Henry Dunhill (1842-1901), ran a workshop around Euston Road that began with sack-sewing and expanded into tarpaulins, tents, rope, and harness; records show the product range had broadened considerably by the mid-1880s. Alfred joined his father as an apprentice at fifteen, in 1887. He took over the business in 1893 and soon shifted the family trade's target market by founding the "Dunhill's Motorities" line for well-off motoring enthusiasts.

This background shows that the oldest object bearing the brand name need not be a pipe. One example that has entered the collecting literature is a metal fly-fishing box stamped HENRY DUNHILL with the Euston Road address. The piece is reported to date to the late 1880s; though this dating rests on a single collector's examination rather than independent record, the box is nonetheless counted among the oldest surviving Dunhill products.