Kaywoodie

Kaywoodie is an American pipe brand rooted in the Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy (KB&B) firm founded in New York in 1851. It is known for the clover-leaf emblem inlaid on the stem and its screw-in Drinkless mechanism; by the mid-twentieth century it was counted among America's best-known factory pipes. Over time the brand name also became the name of the company that made it.

A Name Out of the Bowery

The German-born Kaufmann brothers opened a small pipe shop in New York's Bowery neighborhood in 1851; in the early years production was carried out by hand in the back room of the shop. Over time the firm came to be known as Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy, or KB&B for short. By the turn of the century the company had grown large enough to open agencies in St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Records show that the inlaid clover leaf and the KB&B letters set within the leaf were registered as a trademark in 1881.

The Kaywoodie name first appeared in February 1919 as the name of one of KB&B's product lines. It is said that the name was derived from a combination of Kaufmann's initial K with the English word "wood," the wood in question being briar. By the mid-1920s the name had spread across a broad series, and in the following years it became the identity of the company itself. Growing demand also moved production: the workshop relocated first to Union City, New Jersey, then in 1935 to West New York in the same state.