58. Peterson New Lines for 2017: First Look
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Aside from a pilgrimage up Croag Patrick in County Mayo, followed by a pint of craft beer at the Porterhouse Brewing Co. in Dublin’s Temple Bar (as long as we’re pretending), I believe one of the best ways to celebrate is raise our Petes in humble thanks for all the Irish have given us, including good pipes to smoke. To give you even more cause for celebration, here’s a first look at the 2017 new product lines from Peterson. I only have official photos at this point, but I’ll follow up with more information in a few weeks. For now, enjoy. Limited Edition / Pipe of the Year What could possibly follow the 2016 POY with such great visual contrast, but an homage to Peterson’s original 1906 chubby? I’ve talked about this shape before, but when Peterson made their first reproduction back in the 2005, they used the largest of the original “Jap” shapes. Here they use the medium shape and come closer to the classic forward-canted egg / bell from that catalog. My late friend “Trucker Chuck” Wright, known to many old-time Pete aficionados, had a companion-case set of these originals, one in briar and one in meer, which now sits in Tom Palmer’s office in Sallynoggin. At first I was hoping for a P-Lip, but looking at that wide bit reminds me of my Italian chubbies from over at Neatpipes – and the wide-grip mouthpieces on those deliver extreme comfort between the teeth. Don’t know if this is a limited edition of 500 pieces again this year, but I’m hoping we might get an upgrade on the LE box. I like the blast on this year’s pipe (at least, the one shown) better than last, and the rustication is a vast improvement over the past few years, although still not up to the soft, deeply craggy “Pebble Rustic” of the 1990s. Clontarf XL11 Do you remember back when you first took up the pipe? When you didn’t have two dollars to rub together and felt blessed if you had the money to take your girl for a burger and fries? Back when you smoked your Dad’s Kaywoodie (the bulldog with the stinger) and bought your first pipe out of a basket? Those days are as enchanted for me as anything in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. I remember looking through the cases at all the pipes at Ted’s in Tulsa that I couldn’t afford, going from pipe to pipe to pipe. Pete Systems were $33, basket pipes $8. A Jobey Stromboli, my first real pipe, and one I treasure to this day, was $12.50. XL22 Well, the Clontarf is the kind of pipe that, as a beginning pipeman, I would return to look at again and again, hoping my favorite shapes were still in the case. The visual design just pops—that smooth honey-brown with its striking rim rustication, the bold black PETERSON over CLONTARF logo (better than a…