an email/letter from Bill Taylors Children. Sept 19, 2009.
Dear Friends,
Following the communications of this week, it is with deep regret that we must inform you of the sad news that Bill Ashton-Taylor passed away at approximately 11:40am GMT on Wednesday 16th September 2009, shortly after a visit from Nicola in hospital. He’s condition had been heavily controlled and the medical team assured us he was in no pain.
We understand that this may be upsetting news to many of you who knew our father throughout his lifetime of hand crafting high quality and unique smoking pipes. We believe he brought pleasure and joy to many people through his craftsmanship, his enthusiasm for keeping the art of pipe smoking alive and mostly his infectious charm.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has passed on concern and kind words over the last few months and most of all to the many dedicated Ashton pipe smokers who have supported our father and shown their appreciation for his work. We know it meant a great deal to him to receive your praise and it was always his honour to provide his products to such an appreciative community. Particularly those enthusiasts that hold large Ashton collections and those who took the pilgrimage to Essex, UK to visit our father in his natural habitat, the factory in Romford and the barns at the bottom of our garden. We know that he had as much pleasure from your visits as we can only imagine you had from seeing the birth of Ashton pipes from Briar to a treasured Ashton.
From our father’s time at Dunhill and making the worlds smallest pipe to the conception of the Ashton Magnum (quite the opposite), our father has made many memorable and momentous contributions to the history of pipe smoking. He has built up the name from a hobby in our garden shed in the early 1980s to a global name of quality and we are very proud of this.
You are probably already aware that our father’s love of “tapping the admiral” over his lifetime had led to his terminal disease of cirrhosis of the liver. The recent car accident was as a result of this declining condition rather than an unfortunate accident, which contributed to his recent rapid deterioration. We would ask that you consider any information you receive in light of what you already knew of our father and your memories of him. We would appreciate if you could remember him for the pleasant times you shared, the excellent work he produced and the quality name he represented rather than any contention you may have or are likely to experience.
As mentioned before Jimmy Craig is the only person we are aware of that carries on our fathers traditions in crafting pipes the “Ashton” way and this can only be verified by you, the pipe community as you experience his work. We hope that Jimmy will continue our fathers legacy, as the art of crafting smoking pipes is now a very rare skill indeed. We hope that you agree that the quality of Jimmy’s work is indeed that of our fathers, we certainly know our father was very proud of the work that Jimmy was producing for him over the last year or so.
For those who still own the pipes our father produced with his own hands, we hope your treasured pipes are even more precious too you now and we trust you will enjoy them for many years to come. We know that our father would be honoured by your thoughts when smoking them.
Our warmest regards and thanks to you all
Nicola and Spencer Ashton-Taylor