Rudolfs Patent

Rudolfs Patent is less a brand than a stamp. No documents survive tying it to a firm, a founder, or a registration beyond the handful of pipes that carry it, so this entry is limited to what those surviving examples themselves show. Collectors discuss the stamp mainly because its layout and mouthpiece design closely echo a far better-known maker of the period, Peterson.

Appearance of the Stamp

The name is struck across the shank in an arched curve, with the word PATENT set directly beneath it at the center of that arc. The drawing of the initial R is closely related to the shape of the P in Peterson stamps. Taken together, the placement, letter proportions, and word order clearly follow an established pattern of the period. One known example also carries PRIMA beneath the name. PRIMA is a grade stamp also used on Comoy's of London pipes, but Comoy's dating guides place that stamp in the second half of the 1910s, so no overlapping period has been established between the two marks. Their appearing together on the same pipe may point to an exchange of stems or stamps among English workshops, but on its own it proves no production link.