Comoy's Stamp Typology and Dating

Comoy's stamp typology is a method for narrowing the production range of the London firm's pipes by looking not so much at what a stamp says as at how it was struck. The brand never stamped a year code onto a pipe at any point; the date is read not from a single mark but from the combination formed jointly by the letterform, the frame shape, and the mouthpiece mark.

The firm's own history is told in the Comoy's of London entry; the general framework of dating is described in the Comoy's dating guide; here the shape of the marks themselves is taken up.

The Shape of the Frame

Two stamps carrying the same words can belong to different periods if their outlines differ. The curving "COMOY'S" and the curving origin wording on the opposite face most often sit not in a full circle but in a squat oval tapering at both ends. A separate group is the mold in which the letters stack to form a closed circle. In the Extraordinaire series, the oval-framed form of the origin wording is seen.

This distinction's boundaries are not sharp. Worn stamp dies were replaced with new ones while the old ones stayed on the bench a while longer; the two forms can therefore turn up side by side on pipes made in the same year. To read the shape number, see the Comoy's shape numbers list.