Monthly Archives: February 2016

“Come in and take a load off.” – American colloquialism, c. 1940 One of the great attractions to pipe-smoking, however unconscious it may sometimes be, lies in the sense of finally getting to sit down and "take a load off" after a hard day’s work. I’ve been an enthusiast of pokers, cherrywoods and other sitting shapes almost since I took up pipe-smoking some forty years ago. I suspect part of the satisfaction has to do with this anticipation that it’s time, as that old Desert Father Abba John the Dwarf used to say, to take the string off the bow, put away your tools and relax. There’s something calming about a pipe that can do the same –  just sit down and take care of itself, isn’t there? Peterson has had two names for such pipes: “setter” in the 1906 catalog, and “flat bottom,” coined by master-carver Paddy Larrigan in the late 1970s. Paddy’s humorous explanation for the utility of such pipes will be found in The Peterson Pipe Book: The Story of Kapp & Peterson, but there’s no reason we can’t take a look at the shapes.   The 1906 Setter The first flat bottom Peterson appeared in the 1906 catalog as a Patent-Lip (non-System) shape, and was, as you can see, available in either an army-push or traditional flush mount. From the engraving, it was a decent-sized pipe, measuring about 133 mm (5.25 inches) in the push and 127 mm (5 inches) in the flush mount, with a classic chamber geometry of approximately 2.1 to 1, or about 40mm (1.55 inches) deep by 19.5mm (0.77 inches) wide. The straight stem would’ve meant the pipe would “set,” but have to tilt back onto its button. The First Tankard & Barrel (1945 – 1997) If there were any flat bottom shapes from 1906 until the mid-1940s, the catalogs and brochures we know of show no signs of them. Then in 1945 came the famous Specialty Line, and with it the Tankard & Barrel duo, two small pipes that are so archetypally Irish that one is a little surprised to find they haven’t been made since Saint Fionán and the brothers set up shop atop Skellig Michael off the southwest coast of Ireland in the sixth century. The first versions of the Tankard and Barrel, in production from c. 1945–1997, were available in either rustic or smooth and featured a nickel band with an army-push mount. The stem could be had in either fishtail or the P-Lip. The P-Lip, as seen in the following photo, looks wide and flat enough to be quite comfortable – evidence that Peterson can make them this way when they’re so inclined.* A Rustic 1945-Style Tankard Then at some point between the 1997 catalog (the first released under Tom Palmer’s ownership of the company) and the 2000 catalog, the old familiar army-push Tankard & Barrel disappeared, replaced with a straighter flush-mount P-Lip-only stem. The 1997-Style Barrel (Courtesy Smokingpipes.com)  I confess, semi-Luddite that I am, to liking…