Kaywoodie Shape Numbers

Kaywoodie shape numbers are the short numbers stamped on the shanks of American Kaywoodie pipes that encode the bowl's form, length, and stem type. The number alone does not give a production year; but once it is known which catalog a given shape appeared in, a pipe can be placed within a relatively narrow window.

The shape breakdown circulating in the community rests on a list compiled by a forum member who scanned his own catalog collection; it fills the shape-related gap left by the brand's collector's guide.

Three Separate Numbering Periods

The firm's origin traces back to the pipe shop the German-born Kaufmann brothers opened in New York's Bowery neighborhood in 1851; according to the company's history, the Kaywoodie name first appears in February 1919 as the name of a pipe line. The collector who compiled the list places the two-digit numbers in a forty-five-year span between 1927 and 1972, calling this the Reiss-Premier/Kaywoodie era. Reiss-Premier Corp. was among the companies S. M. Frank & Co. purchased in March 1955 together with The Kaywoodie Company and Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy (KB&B). Yet the starting boundary is not beyond dispute: the collector's guide, which draws on the catalogs for the same transition, gives 1936, dating the shift from four-digit to two-digit numbers to that year's catalog. For this reason the digit count of a number should be read not on its own but together with the stamp and the stem hardware.

The numbers 1919-1926 and 1972-1980, left outside the compilation, require separate lists. The boundaries of 1972 and 1980 drawn by the list coincide with years in which the company relocated: in 1972 a new production building and offices opened in Yaphank on Long Island, and in 1980 headquarters moved to Peekskill. This coincidence should not be taken as the reason for the numbering.

Forty-five years is longer than a two-digit series can comfortably carry. Numbers were reused from period to period: number 15 means a long-shanked apple in 1927-1928, a paneled apple in 1932-1935, and a squat little bulldog in 1957-1964. By contrast, some numbers run through the entire period; 01 (yacht), 07 (large billiard), 13 (extra-large Dublin), and 42 (medium apple) never dropped out of the catalog from 1927 to 1972.