05. The New Sportsman Line.
One of the new series for 2014 is the Sportsman, which should be out any week now. You may have seen the promotional photo over at IPPC; if not, I’ve reposted it here. I don’t know how many of the shapes are actually in production yet, but the 01 Sportsman in my hands is one of the first out the door. 01 Sportsman (Reverse) In the banner picture, from left to right, it looks like shapes 105, 01, 68, 69, 87 and 02. Three finishes on display: Kelly green smooth, matt walnut, and orange/brown contrast for the blast. K&P has shown an interest in pocket pipes almost since their founding. The 1905 catalog features a number of them, including outdoor pipes like the R.I.C. (which stands for Royal Irish Constabulary, the name of the official Irish police force back in the day), and indoor “opera” pipes like the Oval and the Pat. The oval-bowled pipes were meant to fit neatly inside one’s tail coat for smoking entr’act. R.I.C. (1905) Since then there’s been the SPORTS line, introduced in 1947 but not well known in the States until the early 1970s. These pipes used full-size Classic Lines bowls but cut down the shanks to accommodate small P-Lips (except on the original 5 Bulldog, which just used a stubby full-sized stem. There was a renewed interest in the Sports line in the first decade of this century, emanating from Italy, where they’ve been a constant seller over the years, and some of them have made their way onto the U.S. market. Sports 6 In about 2011 a new outdoor pocket pipe series emerged, the Outdoor, again featuring full-size bowls with shortened bowls, this time with what appear to be small fishtail stems. There were some great shapes, and I kept meaning to buy one, but didn’t, and now they’re gone. Outdoor (Shape 65, Courtesy Smokingpipes.com) Fast forward to 2013 when the Hunter (shape 106) and the Golfer (shape 69) were released in Italy, the former in a brown and orange contrast blast and the latter in a gloss smooth green finish, both with sterling mounts and shortened fishtail ebonite stems. Hunter 106 (Courtesy AlPascia) Golfer 69 (Courtesy AlPasica) My guess is that these sold well enough to convince Peterson to expand the concept with the introduction of the Sportsman line. Many pipemen shy away from “nosewarmers,” believing they smoke hot. This is a difficult myth to debunk, but I’ll do my best. Most of us believe the longer the pipe’s shank, the cooler the smoke will be when it enters the mouth. And yet in point of scientific fact, the coolest place is where the smoke enters the air hole. If you look at Robert F. Winan’s excellent chapter “Reflections on Tobacco,” pp. 58-62 in The Pipe Smoker’s Tobacco Book (1972)—which I think is still available from Briar Books Press—he’ll demonstrate that the average temperature of pipe-smoke ranges from 85° to 118° F with an average temperature of 96°, or…