Merchant Service was originally a mid-century British pipe brand founded by Herbert Merchant, and is today most remembered for manufacturing the pencil-shank billiard pipes favored by Bing Crosby. As with so many pipe companies of days gone by, Herbert Merchant Inc. was ultimately dissolved, with the Merchant Service story seemingly coming to a close—until something quite special happened. The Merchant Service name was purchased by another pipe maker—this time an American artisan and Anglophile—named Gregory Polla. Polla’s love for not only the classic “Bing” model, but English pipe design more generally, led him to revive Merchant Service pipes, handcrafting limited runs of iconic, traditional shapes in his workshop. This particular Merchant Service, by Polla, is one of his “Full Bent” models, a fittingly named bent billiard that evokes the beloved Oom Paul shapes of early briar pipes.