Dunhill Mouthpieces: Marks of Authenticity and Their Limits

Dunhill mouthpieces are treated in the brand's history not as a part independent of the bowl, but as one half of a whole shaped together with the pipe. This production habit has turned the mouthpiece into the most-discussed detail of Dunhill collecting: for most old examples, it cannot be said with certainty whether the mouthpiece sitting on a pipe left the factory together with that bowl.

Hand Cutting and Lip Shapes

In the early period, most pipes were sold with a screw or military-style push mouthpiece, with bowl and mouthpiece made separately and joined at the end of the process. At Dunhill, however, the push-style mouthpiece was fitted onto the roughly cut bowl from the very start, going through sanding and finishing together with the bowl. Mouthpieces were not molded but hand-cut from ebonite (vulcanite) rod or sheet, with the tenon end individually thinned to fit the shank.

The lip shape changed over time. The thick lip of the earliest examples became thinner and wider in the 1920s, and the fishtail shape was added to this in the 1930s. When machine cutting was tried in 1976 to cut labor costs, the lip thickened again; following complaints, the brand returned to hand craftsmanship. The detailed breakdown of this evolution is in the entry on Old Dunhill vs. New Dunhill.