Monthly Archives: March 2016

“Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!” St. Patrick’s Day blessings to you! As I finish up the second draft of The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson this week, I keep thinking about the long history of what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call their “inclusivity.” The Gaelic word for it is Gart, which seems to mean “generosity, hospitality, open-handedness.” Its literal meaning is “warmth” or “friendliness,” meaning acceptance and openness to other people, giving each their due. It keeps shining through the interviews and newspaper articles, biographies and anecdotes about Charles Peterson, Harry Kapps, Tony Dempsey, Tom Palmer and many of the people who have worked to make Peterson pipes for more than 150 years. This virtue is seen quite clearly in Peterson’s partnership with Mario Lubinski, their Italian distributor since the late 1970s. Lubinski is an amazing man and the story of how his father founded the business and he continued it deserves to be told, preferably in English for those (like me) unfortunate enough not to know Italian. We’ve got some of Lubinski’s magic (including amazing pipe pix) in the book, but for now let me just say that, after Harry Rogers back in the mid-twentieth century, Mario Lubinski has been Peterson’s most unique trade partner, producing some of the most interesting, unique, and for the U.S. collector, all-but-unknown Peterson lines. Each year Lubinski, in addition to carrying the regular international Peterson lines, releases a few specialty lines for the Italian market. The shapes are drawn not only from the regular Classic Range catalog, but from the B shapes as well – meaning special collections and Pipe of the Year shapes. I want to begin with a look at the special Lubinski lines for 2013, as these are becoming a bit scarce and there may be someone who needs to fill a slot in his rotation with one of these beauties. The Lubinski special lines are invariably sterling-mounted with acrylic stems and usually (but not always) a blast finish. Sometimes you’ll see a high-grade from Lubinski, issued in an orange stain with a smooth finish, like the Kapp-Royal. From the business side, the idea (if I understand it correctly) has to do with the fact that Peterson will always have bowls left over from a special collection or Pipe of the Year and needs to “place” them, as it were. We see this here in the U.S. in the special shapes sometimes issued in the St. Patrick’s Day or Christmas series, like the recent incredibly cool Large Tankard from the Mark Twain set, which appeared in the St. Patrick’s Day 2016 collection. The only possible down-side of the Lubinski special issues for some aficionados is the acrylic stems. I don’t mind an occasional acrylic and have a few Petes with them in my rotation, even though I prefer the softer, more comfortable ebonite. The upside of the Lubinski lines is that they are unique, always interesting, produced in small quantities, rarely seen in the U.S.,…