CAN ANYONE HELP WITH A BARLING PROBLEM?

[Oystermouth]

Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Barlings? They seem to have vanished. I have a Barling that needs a new mouthpiece and I am having very little luck contacting them.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[monbla256]

As far as I know, Barlings ceased to exist by the mid '70s. Unless someone has bought the name and is making new pipes with it. If that is the case, I would not have any idea how you get in touch. Did you buy it new recently and if so maybe you could contact the retail source you bought it from ? There are firms which can replace the stem with handcut vulcanite stems as they used on the older ones, these folks being very good :
http://www.walkerbriarworks.com/ I've used them for several years.

 

[Anonymous]

Barling, Comoy, Loewe et al. were all distributed by one outfit, even back in their golden age. Around 1980 they were wound down as semi-independent concerns by the cartel, and those trade names stamped on pipes made initially by one factory built to make them (Swansea if I recall, but don't shoot me) and, when that didn't pan out, to pipes made abroad and jobbed locally.

FWIW

:face:

 

[Oystermouth]

Wish it was Swansea I live next to it! They were still being made in Merseyside for Barling up to about 2003.

 

[Anonymous]

The Post Transition period is commonly defined as beginning in 1968.

The company [Barling] is moved to the Isle of Mann. Pipes are outsourced to Denmark to be made by several companies."

From various sources :

Comoy’s remained a family owned company until it was finally taken over by Cadogan Investments during the early 1980’s.

From what I can gather, Cardogan's various brands continued to be made in separate facilities throughout the1970s. It was the purchase of Orlik in 1980 that enabled the Cadogan group to consolidate all manufacturing in that company's new factory in Southend-on-Sea. Whether or not this transferral was a gradual process and when it affected Loewe is unclear. We hear that, as a company, Loewe was not formally wound up by Cadogan (the successor to Civic) until the late 1980s.

To an extent, Cadogan have been helpful with information, but they have not answered historical questions. For example, they still use a London stamp, though production has been on the Essex coast for well over a decade, possibly two.

Cadogan has not answered questions concerning this or the later move to Southend. However, from the evidence contributed by readers of the first version of this article, I would say that the second event occurred by or in 1982, the year in which a Danish collector has reported buying a [Loewe] Canadian with the new 296 shape number.

Curiously, some of the Loewe shapes from the 1970s and early 1980s apparently reappeared as Comoys (now also made by Cadogan), later on.

BBBs are now produced in the Cadogan factory in Southend-on-Sea. Few people regard pipes made after 1980 as collectible.

Orlik : This firm built a new factory in Southend-on-Sea, but was then taken over by the Cadogan group. The factory subsequently became the birthplace of all Cadogan-made pipes from about 1980 onwards. Formerly a good make . . .

FWIW

:face: