Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is arguably one of the most impactful English authors of the modern age, and is widely credited with popularizing crime fiction, especially the murder/mystery and detective subgenres. Born in 1859, Doyle wrote the first story to include the now-ubiquitous sleuth Sherlock Holmes in 1887 when he published A Study in Scarlet in a yearly periodical, a story that would be republished in 1888 as a full novel. Doyle published a number of other works featuring the detective, and Sherlock Holmes would go on to appear in four novels and 56 short stories that would become the author's most immediately recognizable works. Doyle died at 71 on July 7th, 1930, having created one of the most enduring characters in all fiction, with Holmes' routine pipe smoking making him one of pop culture's most iconic pipe smokers.

Though in the books Holmes mainly smoked straight pipes, the detective has become indelibly linked with the Calabash shape, as his portrayals on the silver screen by actors like William Gillette and Basil Rathbone featured the deeply bent shape. As such, for the 165th anniversary of Doyle's birth, Dunhill has created a limited-edition boxed set that includes a briar Calabash in Group 5 proportions. These pipes are possessed of ample sinuousness, with a deep bend through the shank and stem that poise these pieces for comfortable smoking. The transition is quite tight, and it gives way to a fairly slim, curling shank that's capped with a broad dome of sterling silver engraved with "A.C.D 1959 - 2024" and acts as a sturdy military mount for the sleekly tapering stem that arcs away out back. Up front, the bowl stands on a sweeping heel and grows tall, expressively flaring walls that reach up to a flat rim, holding a capacious chamber and remaining light enough for comfortable clenching. Dressed in the crisp sandblast of the Cumberland finish, this pipe is additionally serialized out of 40 total examples and comes in one of the marque's iconic leather-bound, book-style boxes.

When Alfred Dunhill released his patented Shell Briar, he forever changed the pipe-smoking world at large. Dunhill has often been credited with being the first to offer sandblasted pipes (arguably the most popular finish today), and the Cumberland finish further displayed Dunhill's innovative spirit. Well received after its release in 1979, the Cumberland series was named for the English marque's warehouse on Cumberland road, and the line's signature, brindled vulcanite stem became so iconic, the warmly striated material is now referred to simply as "cumberland."