Reiss-Premier Co.

Reiss-Premier Co. is one of the companies that shaped American pipe manufacturing in the first half of the twentieth century. Formed in Chicago from the merger of two established firms, Reiss Brothers and the Premier Briar Pipe Company, it soon became known less for the pipes it made itself than for the brands and patents it owned. Today the company's name is chiefly remembered as a link in the history of Kaywoodie.

The Chicago Years

The name behind the merger was Jacob D. Burger. Sources diverge on the founding date: compilations drawing on trade press of the period place the merger in early 1920, while the pipe literature also widely cites 1922. Either way, the company began operating out of a rented industrial floor in downtown Chicago, in a period when demand for briar pipes was rising fast in the postwar American market.

The idea that kept the brand afloat was not a pipe model but an internal mechanism. In 1926 the company registered the term "Drinkless," a name describing a component meant to keep moisture accumulating in the chamber from reaching the stem and then the mouth. In August of that same year, Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy, considered America's oldest pipe house with a history reaching back to 1851, was bought out. This brought a well-established brand and a new patent under the same roof, and within the following year the Drinkless mechanism became standard equipment on Kaywoodie pipes.