Yearly Archives: 2020

I spent one of the most enjoyable evenings I can remember over dinner with Tom Palmer and his wife Elke Ullmann in June of 2019 in a gorgeous suburb just outside Dublin. I’m not the kind of person who dines out much, but it turned out to be the kind of dinner where the food and wine were not only incredible but were surpassed by the conversation, and the conversation was such that there came a point in the evening when I looked up and saw the restaurant was empty, lights being turned off and a lovely young waitress telling us (very politely) that it was time to go. I knew Elke had worked for Peterson but had no idea of the extent or range of that work, and when I found out she designed both tobacco tins and pipe collection art for the company, I asked if I might interview her for the blog. In this first part, Elke talks about her design work for Peterson's amazing special release tins from 2008-2018. For each tin, I have added descriptions of the tobaccos gleaned from TobaccoReviews.com. How did you get involved in designing the tins for Peterson’s special release tobaccos? Well, Tom and I met in business in Germany about a thousand years ago. At the time I was working for a company in Offenbach, near Frankfurt. It was a family business, and I had worked in that company for about twenty-five years. The company sold leather goods for pipe smokers and cigarette smokers and cigar smokers—all sorts of leather goods for smokers, and they sold pipes as well. The company and Tom talked together and Tom gave that company Peterson’s distribution—and that’s how we met. And so I had a good bit of background about the business and the pipes and accessories, and so finally a few years later, after we were business partners, we became friends, then even more so, necessitating that I move to Dublin. At first, I still went back to Germany to do business for the company in Offenbach, traveling back and forth for two years.  So I was in Dublin for about three weeks, then I traveled to Offenbach for a week. Then I had to undergo major surgery for my back, which knocked me out for about twelve months. I was told if I didn’t take it easy, I might end up in a wheelchair, which was quite scary. To cut a  long story short, I stopped working for the company in Offenbach, moved to Dublin full time, went to hospital, got all that done—in 2006—then slowly recovered. I was used to working daily, then I had nothing to do was was really bored. And Tom said, “Why don’t you start doing some design work for Peterson? You know the business as well as I do and you know a lot about design,” because I was already involved in interior design. “Why don’t you start with the Special Reserve tin for 2008?—that was…