When you hear the word Rolex the thing that immediately pops into your head is 'one Hell of an expensive watch'. So about 25 years ago when I walked into a local tobacco shop and came upon a vest pocket pipe stamped Rolex I wasn't sure if I'd found a potential treasure or some cheap knock-off capitalizing on the Rolex name. Some clever marketing ploy to sucker in the fashionable Yuppies of the era, impressed by the name alone, to buy what was essentially a novelty item. "With a name like Rolex it has to be quality!" But considering I, a lowly steelworker, was able to pay for a ROLEX product with the money in my wallet - it's safe to assume this was no high end pipe worthy of the Rolex name.
The only mark on the pipe is the word ROLEX, stamped on the bottom, along with the country of origin, Italy. Vest pocket pipes that are currently on the market have Bribba Rolex or Savinelli Rolex stamped on the side of the pipe. As are similarly designed budget priced vest pocket pipes manufactured as "Pocketfit". Prices may vary but the design is essentially the same, as is the smoke they provide - about five minutes tops. This is plain and simply a novelty pipe. The chamber of the bowl is small, narrow, and troublesome when tamping. Due to the extremely narrow oval shape a Czech tool will barely fit in the narrow space. A better alternative and similarly priced pipe would be the Baraccini pocket pipe And as for my experience the ROLEX vest pocket pipe presents a real fire hazard to the pipe smoker with an abundance of facial hair. When lighting it expect to smell a bit of singed hair as well.
<<Mastercraft pipe names -- Joe asked how many names I could remember from my time at Mastercraft. I'll try. You'll see that Mastercraft was much more than a branded line of pipes. Some names may surprise.
Factory in Israel -- Shalom (had several sub names but we sold so few that I only remember Handmade, Satin Grain, Sandblast)
Alpha -- Andersen, Mastersen, Rex, Esprit, Ultra, Caprice, Handmade, Freehand, Comfit, Classic, Calabash, Citation, Pedistal, Supreme, Burl King, Dialite, Allegro, Century, Magnum, Tinder Box Jura, Nobility, and a few others, 721, 722, 723, 724 Narghilia (sp) depending on the number of hoses.
Warehouse -- Hardcastle (seconds from the Dunhill factory), Orlik, Covered metal gift boxes for 1, 2, 4, 7, and 12 pipes, Jeantet, Jeantet Jumbo, Jima (saw one on Ebay yesterday). Bunches of unstamped natural finish pipes from France (we sold 4 dozen of these to every Tinder Box store in the country in 1979 and still had a bunch left), Small Cherrywoods, Tyrolean Cherry, Giant Cherry (Bowl the size of a football, 2 ft. shank), Lloyds, Old Vic, Derby pigskin covered, Calfskin covered, Something fuzzy covered (didn't want to know), Meerschaum lines from everywhere, Seville, Seville Convertible, Seville Lucite, Seville Twin Bore, Royal Ascot, BB Ascot, Lido, Lectura, Iceberg, Water Pipes..711,712,713,714 (depending on the number of hoses), Vest Pocket, Rolex, Mini Rolex, Olive, Small, Medium, and Large Well Pipes (from FeRo), Tom Thumb, Brewster, Stetson, Stetson Southern, Dryfilter, Mellow Root, Carved Heads (bull, walrus, deer, etc.), Massa Meerschaum, Massa Meerschaum Oil Cured, Meerschaum Top Bowls (for Viking like pipe), Calabash, Block Meerschaum Heads and standard shapes.
Shelves -- Hurricane, Sparkproof, Doodler, Golf, Legion of Honor, Dr. Bernard, Cigar Pipe, Jet Pipe, Radiator, Filtermaster, Syncromatic, Millard, Aldo Velani (several sub names that I don't recall), Ladies Pipes.
0100, 0200, 0300, 0400, 0400R. Made by Grabow and used by Mastercraft as Private Label Pipes.
Whitehall -- Don't remember many of these.. Stubby, Sterling, Darby, Thermofilter, Several more. Sir Walter Raleigh Head.
Several Marxman brands in small quantities. Irish Green (yes it was), Peeps (Had a girlie picture in a small hole in the pipe).
5 kinds of vinyl pouches, 6 leather pouches, Watch Lighter, Rocket Pipe Lighter, and another 6 or so lighters, 2 disposable lighters. Every tool that could be imagined.
I'll probably add a few more as I remember them. Not bad for 30+ years ago.. ted>>
An inexpensive Ropp that I'm enjoying greatly, along with a Trilobite from Utah's House Range and some exegetical materials all laid out on my Texas balcony. I love the sandblast on the Ropp. Makes me feel like I'm smoking an avocado.
@Woodsman Excellent pipe and presentation Frank. So happy to see you and @mseddongetting into the spirit of things and posting photos of your pipes as well. It was starting to get lonely here. But now I'm starting to see pipes from someone other than myself.
And @motie2 as usual, you are a wealth of information.
@mseddon Great shot and even nicer pipe. That is some beautiful birds-eye grain. I love my two Peterson's and hope my next purchase is an army mount as well.
During the 70s' it was still possible to go to your neighborhood drug store and find a large selection of OTC blends right up front on the racks. All kinds of boxed, tinned, and pouched tobacco to choose from. And there was usually a nice selection of what were considered inexpensive drug store pipes from manufactures like Dr. Grabow, Yello-Bole, and Kay-woodies. For the longest time I assumed all pipes had stingers in them since most drug store pipes I'd purchased were equipped with those pesky stingers. It wasn't until the Medico Pipe appeared on the shelf one day that I discovered the 6mm filtered pipe.
One day I went in and the druggist behind the counter was exceptionally talkative and directed my attention to a brand new pipe, just on the market. He rambled on about new space age technology and swearing the pipe was constructed of the same material as the heat shields protecting the astronauts in the Apollo space capsule. He was laying it on so thick and I bought every word. I found myself mesmerized by the hype and mystified by this glistening snow white pipe ... "made of a substance called pyrolytic graphite."
Maybe the old guy was right ... it sounded like something engineered by NASA. I could almost imagine a distress call to mission control ... "Houston, we have a problem. We've been hit! A meteor shower has damaged our pyrolytic graphite shield!"
The pipe was called the Venturi. And I left the drug store beaming with pride at my acquisition ... a new supersonic space age smoking machine.
As the years went by this highly touted pipe would be manufactured under many names from: "the Pipe" to "THE SMOKE". But what the passage of time has proven ... this new marvel of technology neither changed the face of pipe making - nor was it the perfect smoker, and as a result soon disappeared from the marketplace.
My Venturi is a nice looking pipe but as a 'smoker' the bowl gets too damn hot to hold. There are other idiosyncrasies associated with the care and maintenance of the Venturi pipe that contradict conventional thinking, such as brushing out the spent tobacco from the bowl with a bristle pipe cleaner after each smoke to keep a cake from building up. Unlike a briar or wood pipe which smoke best went there is a cake to protect the bowl, pyrolytic graphite bowls can be damaged by allowing a cake to form. In many ways similar to the bowl of a Meerschaum.
I keep my Venturi around as something of a novelty and memento of the 70s'. When the phrase 'space age technology' was tossed around as an enticement for any new-fangled product.
@motie2 I guess only Medico uses Brylon. And apparently they had their pipes constructed of a synthetic material before the venture pipe made a big issue out of pyrolytic graphite. So chances are I probably had a synthetic Medico Brylon pipe well before the Venturi. I guess the only difference was the Medico ad campaigns weren't as captivating. Yet look who is still around and who isn't.
In 1966, S.M. Frank developed a material called "Brylon" made of a high temperature resin combined with wood flour, pulverized wood of varying consistency. The pipes were cheaper and more durable, but heavier in the mouth and had a tendency to smoke hot and wet. They are still made today, and favored by some for their inability to be burnt out or otherwise damaged without significant effort and the ease of cleaning the pipe.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave birth to not only one - but two great pipe smoking literary figures. The first was of course Sherlock Holmes, and the second was Professor George Edward Challenger. Most readers only know of Challenger's exploits in Doyle's "The Lost World", where Challenger and his cohorts find themselves deep in the Amazon jungle on an isolated plateau inhabited by living dinosaurs. But Conan Doyle sent the cantankerous professor and his reporter companion Edward Malone on a series of adventures following their return from the Amazon which included "The Poison Belt", "The Land Of Mist", "The Disintegration Machine" and "When The World Screamed".
In the 1975 writers Wade and Manly W Wellman penned the novel "Sherlock Holmes's War Of The Worlds" which places both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger in the heart of London during H.G Wells' Martian invasion, where the pair must set egos aside and combine their intellect to help defeat the Martian horde
And the Challenger saga continued thanks to Scottish author William Meikle. His novels "The Island Of Terror" and "The Kew Growths And Other Tales" are pulp tales of high adventure and non-stop action. And through it all both Challenger and Malone face these difficulties with either a pipe clenched firmly between their teeth or a Cheroot. And I might add, a bit of over-indulging in libations before, during, and after their adventures.The adversarial relationship between Challenger and reporter Malone in "The Lost World" are long resolved after years of shared experiences and the pair have formed a strong bond. The chemistry between the pair in the Meikle novels makes their interaction and storytelling more entertaining.
So in keeping with The Lost World them, and considering a vast majority of these tales and movies seems to culminate with the climactic eruption of a volcano what better pipe than the Baraccini Natural Volcano to be today's featured pipe.
Today's pipe is the first of four Meerschaums I currently have in my collection. The Skull Meerschaum is another Halloween favorite and the one I smoke the most often. But apparently not enough to have affected the coloration, other than near the top of the bowl. I'm looking forward to the day when it slowly get that reddish brown mahogany hue. But to due so I'm going to have to put a lot more work into it ... and my normal habit of rotating pipes will unfortunately lengthen the process considerably. But for now I'll simply enjoy smoking that bone white grinning skull. And appreciate the craftsmanship that went into carving it.
@motie2 Believe it or not I've had the pipe for about 17 years. My sister bought it for me on my 50th birthday. But I really didn't start smoking it until about two years ago. I remember reading an article about the proper care of a quality Meerschaum pipe and the author was a real stickler, suggesting the pipe be smoked while wearing gloves keep for getting the oils of your skin transferred to the pipe. Well I thought that was ridiculous and just kept the pipe in the nice case and set it aside. I had a few inexpensive Meerschaums my kids got for me just smoked them. And never had an issue with my oily Italian fingers ruining my pipes. So finally one day I decided to smoke the skull pipe as I would any other pipe - and it's been a great smoke ever since then. I imagine the guy who wrote the article also drank his tea with his pinkie finger pointing upwards.
In 1977 the Chicago radio station WKQX sponsored a unique opportunity for area bands. Artists were invited to submit an original song for consideration to be included on their WKQX Hometown Album showcasing local talent. Out of the 1900 entries our band Vesuvius (spelled wrong on the album) was one of 11 bands selected. The only band from Indiana. It was quite an experience. Several years later I received a call for the recording engineer who recorded the sessions, asking if I'd like the original 2" 8 track studio master of "Dream Of Youth", the tune recorded for the album. And even though I didn't have the professional studio equipment to play a 2" tape I gladly accepted the tape as a memento of what was the band's major triumph. And with recording studios transitioning from analogue to digital equipment this 2" studio tape is something of a museum piece.
So with the 2" studio tape and actual track listing sheet of the Vesuvius song "Dream Of Youth" as the backdrop, today's Daily Briar Photoshoot features a beautiful black bent Rhodesian from Italian pipe maker Molina, located in Barasso in Lombardy, Italy.
As doors were opening for my band Vesuvius following our appearance on The WKQX Hometown Album certain conflicted members were inadvertently sabotaging our efforts before we even stepped through the threshold, and as a result the band came to a premature end. Bitter and disillusioned by the experience I sold all my equipment and departed from the music scene vowing never to return. Now we'll flash forward twenty five years to the mid-90s', at a time when the affordable digital 8 track recording studio and keyboard workstations with an endless library of sampled sounds and instruments made it possible for a single musician to produce a marketable product from a home-based project studio. So in 1997 I surrounded myself with what was at the time state-of-the-art keyboards, purchased a Yamaha MD8 MultiTrack MD Recorder, and set about recording my first album "Our Past Is Cast In Stone" under the moniker 'Ghosts Of Pompeii' (a homage to my band Vesuvius). And until a few years ago when my hands and body turned against me I had recorded a total of 10 studio albums and compiled sufficient material for a few Best-Of compilations. And proudly three of my 'Ghosts Of Pompeii' tunes were selected as part of three separate Progressive Rock Compilation Albums.
The backdrop for today's photo shoot is a sculpture I commissioned from local artist and the son of one of my US Steel co-workers Harvey Dickson Jr., asking him to re-create a famous photo of victims of Pompeii I'd seen in a book. I was intending to use the actual photograph as my album cover until the issue of copyright came into play. And the price to use the photo was greater than I anticipated. So for a sum far less I not only had the album cover picture I wanted but also had an original work of art as a keepsake. And as a footnote: Harvey Dickson Jr. went on to work for Burman Studios in Hollywood on TV shows such as Babylon 5 and assorted feature films.
The pipe is an H.S. Studios Pipe which I affectionately refer to as my Vesuvius Pipe' since it looks like an erupting volcano. The pipe is flanked by two Ghosts Of Pompeii CDs, "Prophets For Profit & Idle Idols" and "From The Ashes Of Vesuvius".
With the danger of a lawsuit, I'll attach the original. The story of Pompeii is mesmerizing. The story of your music career is also fascinating Mr. Ghost. It's incredible when you think of all the millions of private stories that are out there, from a person who was entombed in ash, frozen in time to a Steel worker with his own studio making music. I need to mull over that with a pipe or three.
@motie2 I love those pipes and curious about the price - might be out of my range but they sure are beautiful.
@PhillipThank you very much for the kind comments about my music career. There are a lot of amazing backstories from the various members of the group, and it's great to hear them tell it in their own words. People are more apt to open up and reveal elements of their life's story when we feel comfortable with those around us - and feeling that level comfort here in The Pipeline is high praise to the members of the group. We all have a story to tell ... why I even know of a gentleman here at the group who's son won a Grammy. Maybe you've heard of him ... he goes by the handle @motie2. And I'm blown away by the talented artisan pipe makers here who share photos of their latest creation. I try to read every post just to make sure I don't miss some interesting tidbit of information on the hobby or the members themselves.
I tried. I really did. Tried creating an imaginative backdrop for the Gourd Calabash Pipe without having some obvious reference to Sherlock Holmes. Moved it from the Victorian setting of Conan Doyle's novels and placed it right smack dab on a Roland JP-8000 synthesizer - the last place you'd expect to find a Calabash Pipe posing for a snapshot. But then I clearly heard a voice shout somewhere in the room ... "Preposterous!". And I'd swear it was the unmistakable voice of Nigel Bruce, the actor who co-starred with Basil Rathbone in 14 Sherlock Holmes mysteries between 1939 through 1946. Shaken - but not stirred, I looked around the room, snapped a few more pictures, then thought better of it and proceeded to rethink the remainder of the photo shoot.
Comments
When you hear the word Rolex the thing that immediately pops into your head is 'one Hell of an expensive watch'. So about 25 years ago when I walked into a local tobacco shop and came upon a vest pocket pipe stamped Rolex I wasn't sure if I'd found a potential treasure or some cheap knock-off capitalizing on the Rolex name. Some clever marketing ploy to sucker in the fashionable Yuppies of the era, impressed by the name alone, to buy what was essentially a novelty item. "With a name like Rolex it has to be quality!" But considering I, a lowly steelworker, was able to pay for a ROLEX product with the money in my wallet - it's safe to assume this was no high end pipe worthy of the Rolex name.
The only mark on the pipe is the word ROLEX, stamped on the bottom, along with the country of origin, Italy. Vest pocket pipes that are currently on the market have Bribba Rolex or Savinelli Rolex stamped on the side of the pipe. As are similarly designed budget priced vest pocket pipes manufactured as "Pocketfit". Prices may vary but the design is essentially the same, as is the smoke they provide - about five minutes tops. This is plain and simply a novelty pipe. The chamber of the bowl is small, narrow, and troublesome when tamping. Due to the extremely narrow oval shape a Czech tool will barely fit in the narrow space. A better alternative and similarly priced pipe would be the Baraccini pocket pipe And as for my experience the ROLEX vest pocket pipe presents a real fire hazard to the pipe smoker with an abundance of facial hair. When lighting it expect to smell a bit of singed hair as well.
My Nording Bamboo with all the accoutremants, the 30.06 is just to hold the pipe at that angle.
@Woodsman Excellent pipe and presentation Frank. So happy to see you and @mseddongetting into the spirit of things and posting photos of your pipes as well. It was starting to get lonely here. But now I'm starting to see pipes from someone other than myself.
And @motie2 as usual, you are a wealth of information.
During the 70s' it was still possible to go to your neighborhood drug store and find a large selection of OTC blends right up front on the racks. All kinds of boxed, tinned, and pouched tobacco to choose from. And there was usually a nice selection of what were considered inexpensive drug store pipes from manufactures like Dr. Grabow, Yello-Bole, and Kay-woodies. For the longest time I assumed all pipes had stingers in them since most drug store pipes I'd purchased were equipped with those pesky stingers. It wasn't until the Medico Pipe appeared on the shelf one day that I discovered the 6mm filtered pipe.
One day I went in and the druggist behind the counter was exceptionally talkative and directed my attention to a brand new pipe, just on the market. He rambled on about new space age technology and swearing the pipe was constructed of the same material as the heat shields protecting the astronauts in the Apollo space capsule. He was laying it on so thick and I bought every word. I found myself mesmerized by the hype and mystified by this glistening snow white pipe ... "made of a substance called pyrolytic graphite."
Maybe the old guy was right ... it sounded like something engineered by NASA. I could almost imagine a distress call to mission control ... "Houston, we have a problem. We've been hit! A meteor shower has damaged our pyrolytic graphite shield!"
The pipe was called the Venturi. And I left the drug store beaming with pride at my acquisition ... a new supersonic space age smoking machine.
As the years went by this highly touted pipe would be manufactured under many names from: "the Pipe" to "THE SMOKE". But what the passage of time has proven ... this new marvel of technology neither changed the face of pipe making - nor was it the perfect smoker, and as a result soon disappeared from the marketplace.
My Venturi is a nice looking pipe but as a 'smoker' the bowl gets too damn hot to hold. There are other idiosyncrasies associated with the care and maintenance of the Venturi pipe that contradict conventional thinking, such as brushing out the spent tobacco from the bowl with a bristle pipe cleaner after each smoke to keep a cake from building up. Unlike a briar or wood pipe which smoke best went there is a cake to protect the bowl, pyrolytic graphite bowls can be damaged by allowing a cake to form. In many ways similar to the bowl of a Meerschaum.
I keep my Venturi around as something of a novelty and memento of the 70s'. When the phrase 'space age technology' was tossed around as an enticement for any new-fangled product.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave birth to not only one - but two great pipe smoking literary figures. The first was of course Sherlock Holmes, and the second was Professor George Edward Challenger. Most readers only know of Challenger's exploits in Doyle's "The Lost World", where Challenger and his cohorts find themselves deep in the Amazon jungle on an isolated plateau inhabited by living dinosaurs. But Conan Doyle sent the cantankerous professor and his reporter companion Edward Malone on a series of adventures following their return from the Amazon which included "The Poison Belt", "The Land Of Mist", "The Disintegration Machine" and "When The World Screamed".
In the 1975 writers Wade and Manly W Wellman penned the novel "Sherlock Holmes's War Of The Worlds" which places both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger in the heart of London during H.G Wells' Martian invasion, where the pair must set egos aside and combine their intellect to help defeat the Martian horde
And the Challenger saga continued thanks to Scottish author William Meikle. His novels "The Island Of Terror" and "The Kew Growths And Other Tales" are pulp tales of high adventure and non-stop action. And through it all both Challenger and Malone face these difficulties with either a pipe clenched firmly between their teeth or a Cheroot. And I might add, a bit of over-indulging in libations before, during, and after their adventures.The adversarial relationship between Challenger and reporter Malone in "The Lost World" are long resolved after years of shared experiences and the pair have formed a strong bond. The chemistry between the pair in the Meikle novels makes their interaction and storytelling more entertaining.
So in keeping with The Lost World them, and considering a vast majority of these tales and movies seems to culminate with the climactic eruption of a volcano what better pipe than the Baraccini Natural Volcano to be today's featured pipe.
Today's pipe is the first of four Meerschaums I currently have in my collection. The Skull Meerschaum is another Halloween favorite and the one I smoke the most often. But apparently not enough to have affected the coloration, other than near the top of the bowl. I'm looking forward to the day when it slowly get that reddish brown mahogany hue. But to due so I'm going to have to put a lot more work into it ... and my normal habit of rotating pipes will unfortunately lengthen the process considerably. But for now I'll simply enjoy smoking that bone white grinning skull. And appreciate the craftsmanship that went into carving it.
I find my "The Smoke" handy for driving carpet tacks
In 1977 the Chicago radio station WKQX sponsored a unique opportunity for area bands. Artists were invited to submit an original song for consideration to be included on their WKQX Hometown Album showcasing local talent. Out of the 1900 entries our band Vesuvius (spelled wrong on the album) was one of 11 bands selected. The only band from Indiana. It was quite an experience. Several years later I received a call for the recording engineer who recorded the sessions, asking if I'd like the original 2" 8 track studio master of "Dream Of Youth", the tune recorded for the album. And even though I didn't have the professional studio equipment to play a 2" tape I gladly accepted the tape as a memento of what was the band's major triumph. And with recording studios transitioning from analogue to digital equipment this 2" studio tape is something of a museum piece.
So with the 2" studio tape and actual track listing sheet of the Vesuvius song "Dream Of Youth" as the backdrop, today's Daily Briar Photoshoot features a beautiful black bent Rhodesian from Italian pipe maker Molina, located in Barasso in Lombardy, Italy.
As doors were opening for my band Vesuvius following our appearance on The WKQX Hometown Album certain conflicted members were inadvertently sabotaging our efforts before we even stepped through the threshold, and as a result the band came to a premature end. Bitter and disillusioned by the experience I sold all my equipment and departed from the music scene vowing never to return. Now we'll flash forward twenty five years to the mid-90s', at a time when the affordable digital 8 track recording studio and keyboard workstations with an endless library of sampled sounds and instruments made it possible for a single musician to produce a marketable product from a home-based project studio. So in 1997 I surrounded myself with what was at the time state-of-the-art keyboards, purchased a Yamaha MD8 MultiTrack MD Recorder, and set about recording my first album "Our Past Is Cast In Stone" under the moniker 'Ghosts Of Pompeii' (a homage to my band Vesuvius). And until a few years ago when my hands and body turned against me I had recorded a total of 10 studio albums and compiled sufficient material for a few Best-Of compilations. And proudly three of my 'Ghosts Of Pompeii' tunes were selected as part of three separate Progressive Rock Compilation Albums.
The backdrop for today's photo shoot is a sculpture I commissioned from local artist and the son of one of my US Steel co-workers Harvey Dickson Jr., asking him to re-create a famous photo of victims of Pompeii I'd seen in a book. I was intending to use the actual photograph as my album cover until the issue of copyright came into play. And the price to use the photo was greater than I anticipated. So for a sum far less I not only had the album cover picture I wanted but also had an original work of art as a keepsake. And as a footnote: Harvey Dickson Jr. went on to work for Burman Studios in Hollywood on TV shows such as Babylon 5 and assorted feature films.
The pipe is an H.S. Studios Pipe which I affectionately refer to as my Vesuvius Pipe' since it looks like an erupting volcano. The pipe is flanked by two Ghosts Of Pompeii CDs, "Prophets For Profit & Idle Idols" and "From The Ashes Of Vesuvius".
@motie2 I love those pipes and curious about the price - might be out of my range but they sure are beautiful.
@PhillipThank you very much for the kind comments about my music career. There are a lot of amazing backstories from the various members of the group, and it's great to hear them tell it in their own words. People are more apt to open up and reveal elements of their life's story when we feel comfortable with those around us - and feeling that level comfort here in The Pipeline is high praise to the members of the group. We all have a story to tell ... why I even know of a gentleman here at the group who's son won a Grammy. Maybe you've heard of him ... he goes by the handle @motie2. And I'm blown away by the talented artisan pipe makers here who share photos of their latest creation. I try to read every post just to make sure I don't miss some interesting tidbit of information on the hobby or the members themselves.
I tried. I really did. Tried creating an imaginative backdrop for the Gourd Calabash Pipe without having some obvious reference to Sherlock Holmes. Moved it from the Victorian setting of Conan Doyle's novels and placed it right smack dab on a Roland JP-8000 synthesizer - the last place you'd expect to find a Calabash Pipe posing for a snapshot. But then I clearly heard a voice shout somewhere in the room ... "Preposterous!". And I'd swear it was the unmistakable voice of Nigel Bruce, the actor who co-starred with Basil Rathbone in 14 Sherlock Holmes mysteries between 1939 through 1946. Shaken - but not stirred, I looked around the room, snapped a few more pictures, then thought better of it and proceeded to rethink the remainder of the photo shoot.