178. Companion Cases & Collections: Collectors and/or Companions?
I want to begin with a timely greeting from Steven Hersey which he posted a few days ago in the comments, in case you didn’t see it: Hello, all. I hope that you are able to adjust to whatever new regimes have been placed before you by your respective governments as we adapt to different life patterns. As one who works from home anyway, the isolation has not negatively affected me and I can continue the routines. But I am aware of the challenges and problems posed for others. My pipes have been constant companions in these days and the only danger is that I’m smoking them more than ever. I have three Petersons on the go at the moment plus a couple of others (Falcons). Thank goodness that for the last couple of years I have been able to build up a small cellar of tobacco; at times like these it is reassuring to be able to dip into the cupboard for ready supplies... I am sure that things will begin to ease at some point; I’m just mindful of those who have lost loved ones to this awful thing. Enjoy your pipes, all. They will be reassuring presences in lonely moments. A K&P 1908 Companion Case I had originally thought to do an April Fool’s day post tomorrow announcing a new series of Peterson Companion sets, but “sheltering in place” has sobered all the fun out of it somehow. Nevertheless, as Steven remarks, there is something about our pipes as companions that has intrigued me for quite a spell and in fact is one of the subjects I explore in a new book I’m working on. Nowadays we usually think of ourselves as pipe collectors, but for many reasons I think there is just as much justification to consider ourselves as companioners of our pipes and our pipes as companions in our fortunes and misfortunes. Our capitalist milieu leans inevitably toward seeing ourselves as accumulators, but I feel there is an imbalance here that isn’t genuinely expressive of many pipe smokers’ interests and feelings if not always their words.* When I told Elke Ullmann, Peterson’s great designer of tins and boxes during the latter part of the Dublin Era (1991-2018), that I thought of myself as a “pipe companioner” last summer, she asked how many pipes I had and said, “Really? You have a relationship with each of those pipes?” Now she is a wise and remarkable lady, one to whose friendship I would aspire if I lived in Ireland, and as I’ve thought about her comment since then, I think my response now would be that I aspire to treating each of my pipes as companions, some more than others, but I inevitably fail. 1908 Patent System Companions (courtesy Secondhandsmokes) The word companion itself is a good one, compañero literally meaning “one who breaks bread with others” and having originated in the practice of soldiers eating together as men of equal standing and in potentially equal peril.…