44. The Peterson “Bent Dutch” Shape Name
Peterson’s shape numbering system is one of the mysteries we knew we would have to solve at the outset of The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson. Even devout collectors like my friend the late Chuck Wright will sometimes scratch their head in befuddlement. All will be revealed, of course, in the book, and I’m in hopes that sellers (and even Peterson) will read the shape numbering section carefully so as to make life a little easier for companioners of these great pipes. But Peterson’s named shapes, while far fewer in number, are just as interesting and mysterious as their numbered ones, in part because their origins have often been lost, even to Peterson themselves. 1 Of course naming a pipe shape is as old as pipes and pipe-makers. In the early days of briar pipe-making companies commonly had different names for the same shape, but over time one name usually took the ascendancy and a shape settled down to just one name—Dublin, bulldog, and Rhodesian come to mind. Or in some cases, the pipe is known by two names –the Oom Paul (or Hungarian) and the Zulu (often called a yachtsman by the Great Generation). Bill Burney’s great shape chart for the old ASP is a forceful argument for the usefulness of these names, and I remember in my early days devouring every shape chart I could lay my hands on. Even more recent artisan shapes, once they become common enough, generate a common name—blowfish, volcano, acorn and fig, to name a few. ASP Shape Chart (Courtesy Bill Burney) Peterson’s named shapes are found in the very first catalog in 1896 with the Cad or Bull Dog.2 By the 1906 catalog there are over a dozen named shapes, most of which we identify in the book. Readers of this blog will recall posts on both the Kaffir (now in the catalog as the reproduction B35) and the John Bull (original 999 shape, discontinued in the 1980s). The shapes are still known in the hobby—the first a predecessor of the Zulu and the second as an author. But there’s something special, I think, in knowing what K&P called them. Peterson had some fascinating names for their shapes early-on, and continued to name a few of their shapes throughout the twentieth century: the Large Bolton (shape 50, 1947 shape chart), the Bent Albert (shape 268, 1947 —what we call a Zulu), the Medium Squat Cad (shape 495 in the 1947 chart—one of Linwood Hines’s favorite shapes). Then there’s the Tankard and the Barrel and the Calabash and the Belgique, a quartet or set of twins that appeared in the mid twentieth-century. After that, we have to fast-forward to 1981’s Mark Twain for a named shape and the incredible outpouring of special collection pipes which followed, most of which all have names before entering the numbered B shape chart. The only example of a named shape with no number since 1981’s Mark Twain is the Large Tankard, which, appropriately enough,…