Kaywoodie Collector's Guide and Dating

The Kaywoodie collector's guide is a reference text compiled to place American Kaywoodie pipes within the periods mapped out by factory catalogs. The monograph, written by Robert W. Stokes, was originally compiled for Chris Keene's pipe pages before being carried over to Pipedia.

The guide does not attempt to give a pipe in hand an exact year; instead, working from factory catalogs dated 1936, 1947, 1955, and 1968-69, plus four undated catalogs, it builds windows along the lines of "present in this catalog, absent from that one."

A Short History of the Brand

The firm's origins trace back to 1851, to a small pipe shop opened in New York's Bowery neighborhood by the German-born Kaufmann brothers. When Bondy joined the partnership in 1854, the name became Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy (KB&B); the clover-leaf stamp inlaid with the KB&B letters was registered in 1881. Sources disagree on when the Kaywoodie name was born: 1915 is commonly cited, though the company's own history states the first Kaywoodie appeared in February 1919. The name is said to derive from a combination of Kaufmann's initial and the English word "wood." In March 1955, S. M. Frank & Co. acquired The Kaywoodie Company along with KB&B and its affiliates; the brand still belongs to that company today.