LHS (L&H Stern)

LHS is the pipe brand of the L&H Stern firm, which manufactured in Brooklyn during the first half of the twentieth century. The name comes from the initials of the two brothers who founded the firm: Ludwig and Hugo Stern.

The brand was known not for one-off handmade pipes but for spreading a broad range of grades and models across the country through a wholesale network. It is one of the brands in which the American series-production tradition, and the shock the briar trade experienced during the war years, can be read most clearly.

Founding and the Brooklyn Workshop

Ludwig Stern's work as a pipe manufacturer, according to records, goes back to 1893. Together with his brother Hugo he reorganized the business and opened a joint factory in 1911; the firm was known as L&H Stern Smoking Pipes & Holders. Production moved into a six-story building at the corner of Pearl and Water Streets in Brooklyn. This location, right beneath the Manhattan Bridge, was no accident: under the era's wholesale-tobacco conventions, buyers wanted to see the factory in person before placing an order, and an address caught between two bridges was an easy destination for merchants coming from outside the city.

The firm's distinguishing trait was gathering almost the entire process under one roof: woodworking, mouthpiece production, and silver and other metal bands were all prepared in the same building. Bodies in woods other than briar were made alongside it. One of the materials the firm used for mouthpieces was Redmanol; this phenolic resin, named for the company Lawrence V. Redman founded in Chicago in 1913, is counted as the first serious industrial substitute for genuine amber, with its clear amber color. In the history of mouthpiece materials, this shift marks one of the turning points in the move from natural resin to synthetic material.