Guest Bog Post used with permission from: http://nicwingsblog.blogspot.com/ Thanks Nic!  Great post.

Alfred Dunhill’s new London home at the magnificent Bourdon House in Mayfair is the first store on the Cuban Cigar Walk London. The history of what is today a global luxury brand is fascinating and when you visit Bourdon House you will find many of Alfred’s novel creations in cases at either end of the Discovery Room on the first floor near the spa and hairdressers.

Alfred Dunhill was a serial innovator. When, at the age of 21 he took over his father’s business which supplied equipment for horse drawn carriages. He quickly realised that the future lay in the new motor powered vehicles which were starting to appear.  He changed his companies name to Dunhill Motorities, and started to develop luxury accessories to supply the drivers of these new motor cars

In 1904 one of Alfred’s customers who had acquired one of these new modes of transport complained that he could not keep his pipe lit while driving in an open top car

Alfred set to work and designed the famous Windshield pipe with a raised section at the front of the pipe bowl.

He patented his new design and the new pipe proved to be a huge success and was a best seller. Users found that it was also very useful for stopping ash from falling onto the table when playing billiards or snooker.

Interested in further developing this trade led him in 1907 to open, at 38 Duke Street St James’s, a small tobacconist where he specialised in the supply of tobacco.

The store had a ledger called the “my mixture book” where each customer had their own blend listed. The customers loved this as they could develop and refine their own mixture until they were satisfied and once they had their final blend this was entered in the book.

The blends of many famous smokers were included in the book including among others the Prince of Wales and Rudyard Kipling and many London Ambassadors.

The fine tobacco Alfred was selling was not matched by the poor French briar pipes which many smokers used.

This had the effect of making the tobacco taste rather bitter so Alfred focussed himself on developing a pipe which would smoke better than any other.

Through long research he developed a multi stage process including seasoning and heat treating the wood so that by 1910 he produced the first Dunhill pipes which were available in the Dunhill shop.

In around 1914 he started to add a little white spot on the mouth piece of the pipe to indicate which way round the hand cut mouth piece should be put back on the pipe after cleaning.

In 1922 there was a famous court case when another pipe manufacturer was accused of passing his pipes off as Dunhill because he was putting white spots on his pipes. In court a witness gave evidence that no gentleman would be admitted to one of London’s Gentleman’s clubs unless he was smoking a Dunhill pipe identified by its white spot.

In 1914 the first world war began in Europe and to ensure sales continued he would package up pipes, wrapping each one carefully in a piece of toilet tissue, knowing that this was probably the most welcome luxury for those serving in the trenches.

He discovered that some of the packages of pipes were being intercepted and were not getting to their intended recipients so he produced “Castor Oil” labels which increased the delivery rate significantly. He included invoices with the pipes to “pay when they returned”. The pipes were passed around Officers Mess’s and introduced many new smokers to Dunhill.