Dunhill Shape Numbers (Shapes List)

Dunhill shape numbers are codes struck on the shank of the brand's pipes to indicate which mould the body came from. The compilation the community calls, in short, the "Dunhill Shapes List" arose from collector Eric W. Boehm scanning the brand's published catalogues to gather these numbers into a single index.

It is not an official document issued by the brand itself, but a compilation built through collector effort; its scope and precision are therefore limited to what can be found in the catalogues. For the brand's history, see the Dunhill (White Spot) entry.

Scope of the List

The compilation rests on Dunhill catalogues dated 1928, 1950, 1960, and 1969. The rows follow a fixed layout: first the shape number, then a short description of the body, the group size, the length in inches, and the catalogue years in which the shape appears. The digit at the end of the row indicates the shape family the body belongs to, and matches today's numbering. Grouping likewise follows these families: straight and bent billiards, apple and pot bodies, dublins and zulus, bulldogs and rhodesians, long-shanked canadians, liverpools and lovats, princes and pokers; a separate cluster is opened for singular bodies that fit none of these.

Dunhill's own shape numbers begin at 31 and run to two or three digits; records indicate that 1 through 30 were reserved for pipes the brand had made outside in its earliest years. There are also bodies coded with letters alongside the numbers. R for pot, K for apple, and LB and LBS for large billiards are the best known of these. The panelled, polygonal-shanked, and matching-carved-bit bodies gathered under the heading "Quaint Shape" in the 1928 catalogue make up the bulk of these letter codes.