163. Documenting a Long Shank Canadian
A few months ago I received a remarkable Peterson shape from Robert Babic, a skilled restorationist working in Slovenia. I’d heard about this shape, but never seen one—a “long-shank” canadian. Gary Malmberg has several early canadians documented in his mammoth “Master Log” of hallmarked Peterson pipes, beginning with a shape 994 Irish Free State (1922-37) and followed by a 980 De Luxe and a 980 “K,” also from the IFS, as well as two more with neither line-name or shape number stamps from the thirty year hallmark hiatus, 1938-1968. But the 994, as you can see from the scale drawing in the 1939 Rogers Imports catalog, measures a mere 6 ¾ inches. It was available across all the Classic Range lines: De Luxe, First Quality, Kapruf, Kapet, Stering, Killarny and Shamrock. I haven’t been able to document the 980, so I can’t tell you how long it is, but Peterson’s other canadian shapes tend to extend to about 6 to 6.50 inches, none of these approaching Babic's rusticated long shank, which comes in at 7.25 inches. The first time I heard about the Peterson long shank was from the late Tony Soderman, the Minneapolis attorney who called himself “Mr Can” on eBay and was an established fixture at the Chicagoland Show for years beyond count. I was tagging along with my then-future co-author to visit Tony’s room at the Chicago show in 2012, as we watched him wheel in box after box of amazing estate pipes. Tony had displayed his collection of long shanks at the 2004 show, and if memory serves, was as we were standing in his room in 2012 enthusing about Peterson long shanks. It was Tony’s firm conviction that Peterson had a factory in Australia, incidentally, that led me to document that “factory” and how it operated back in the 1950s, when Australia was Peterson’s fourth largest export market after the US, the UK and Germany. Dating the pipe was simple. The sterling has the older K & P maker’s mark in shields (the later ones without the points) and no hallmarks, which narrowed the window to 1938-68. But it also has the three-line MADE IN THE over REPUBLIC over OF IRELAND, which narrows the window to 1948-68 (since hallmarking resumed in 1969 and the stamp was used no earlier than 1948). There’s no shape number on the bowl, as you can see in the photo below, which makes me wonder if it was a one-off, a special order or whether it just didn’t get stamped. When I received the pipe from Robert Babic, he had done most everything that needed doing for this pipe, bringing it back to nearly “as new,” and as I looked at it and thought about it, I only found three minor improvements that could be made. The first thing I noticed, after having the pipe on my writing desk for several days, was that the rim was probably in need of re-staining. I couldn’t imagine this was what it looked…