If any pipemaker outside of the Dunhill factory was to have a crack at the "Windshield" pipe, it was going to be the man that built his career around using Fordite — a multicoloured and multilayered material made of baked enamel automotive paint from the Ford factory in Detroit — as an ornamentation. While I might pull up short of calling this pipe an inevitability, there's definitely a symmetry at play here that I can't help but appreciate.

For those at a loss for context, the Windshield pipe was, if not Alfred Dunhill's very first pipe design, then at least the first one he patented — a full three years before the first Dunhill tobacco store opened on Duke Street back in 1907. The raised fore of the bowl was designed to combat the effects of the wind in open car, a real concern considering that cars of the time were little more than motorised horse carriages, often with no doors or roll cage, let alone a roof. It was also quite fitting considering that, at the time, the Dunhill family business was in selling motor accessories via mail order.

Of course, the actual concept is where the comparisons end. In contrast to the more rakish English style of Billiard that would have worn the Windshield originally, it's been shortened considerably, while the proportions of the shank and bowl have been broadened so that the overall design is in that sweet spot of Danish lines and American compactness. Rendered from one of multiple briar blocks that boast over a decades' worth of age in Bill's cellar as he waited for the perfect time and inspiration to carve them, it features a concisely dimpled style of rustication wearing a dark burgundy contrast stain, paired to a creamy Juma stem.

For Bill to be the one to take the theme and bring it into the artisan space feels not only right, but fated. In fact, I think I've come around. This pipe was inevitable, and I am here for it.

— Adam M. O'Neill