Lord Davenport Pipes

Lord Davenport Pipes is an American pipe brand marketed through New York during the Second World War years, named for its inventor, Henry Davenport Bellin. What sets the brand apart is not a cutting or polishing technique but a mechanical stem assembly fitted into the pipe that could be removed and cleaned by hand. The mechanism was protected by two separate U.S. patents, and the brand's entire marketing was built around this invention.

Patents and the Mechanical Assembly

Bellin, listed in patent records as being from Providence, Rhode Island, filed his first application on 16 February 1938; it was granted on 7 February 1939 as U.S. Patent No. 2,146,613, titled "Smoking Device." The design has two telescoping tubes: when the stem is pushed forward, a needle at its tip cleans the mouth of the airway where it opens into the chamber; a one-way flap inside lets smoke pass while blocking saliva from reaching the chamber, and accumulated moisture is expelled through drain holes that align when the tubes are rotated.

The second application is dated 10 February 1940 and was granted on 18 February 1941 as No. 2,232,092. This time the aim was to simplify the mechanism: a sleeve with one short and one long longitudinal groove holds a tongue on the smoke tube that keeps the stem in its normal position within the short groove. When the user pushes the stem forward against a spring and rotates it, the tongue moves into the long groove and the stem comes off entirely. The first patent was assigned to August A. Thomen of New York, the second directly to the Providence-based Davenport, Ltd. Inc.; by this date, then, the brand had taken on a corporate structure. In the pipe industry of the period, a patent served as both a dating tool and a marketing device, as discussed in the entry on pipe patents; Lord Davenport is a textbook example of this.