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THE PETERSON TINTACKER

See end of post for ordering information.

Sébastien Canévet is one of the most delightful Pete Geeks I’ve ever met virtually. In person, I suspect he’s even funnier than he is on his YouTube law show, You Have the Right, which I highly recommend not only because it has great English sub-titles (!), but because you get a chance to meet his cat Triccotine, glimpse his incredible pipe collection, see him in his Lego avatar, and even learn a bit about what’s going on in the French law news.

A Real Bomb Threat

As you might suspect, Sébastien is a law professor. In addition to teaching at the University of Poitiers, he’s the founder of the Internet Rights Forum, a vintage car enthusiast, and a Sherlockian who’s published a deuterocanonical story, “The Case of the Terrible Assassin” (1995), which, sadly, seems not to be available in translation. As I know there are several bilingual Pete Geeks among us, anyone who translates this (with Sébastien’s permission) will earn our eternal gratitude and even a PPN Merit Badge!

You may recall Sébastien’s fascinating study on “Kapp & Peterson’s Early French-Made Figural Briars,” back in PPN #217, which I highly recommend to everyone interested in Patent Petes.  What brings him to us this Sunday morning, however, is something truly epic in the history of Peterson Pipe Notes: his discovery and acquisition of an Irish Free State era tin Peterson sign and desire to see it reproduced for the benefit of Pete Geeks across the globe. “How,” you might ask, “did he ever unearth such a treasure?”  Well, I asked him to explain, which he did:

Sébastien:  I’m a light smoker but an avid collector of pipes. (Quite frankly, I’m a collector of collections.)

My first pipe was a humble clay from the 19th-century French factory Gambier. I was 14 or 15 years old when I bought it with my pocket money: five French francs (about a dollar). I still own it — it was the starting point of my collection.

For some unknown reason, I’ve always been attracted to the British Isles, and I visit them as often as I can. I found my first Peterson — a shabby 314 — at a flea market in London, perhaps Portobello, when I was 18.

It was a real revelation : my late father could keep his pipe in his mouth for an hour. I can’t do that — except with the holy System. Thank you so much, Mister Peterson.

It didn’t take long before I bought another System. You can guess the rest.

Today, I own a large collection of pipes — perhaps 300 — of which 100 are Petersons.

Being a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, I was of course very interested when the Sherlock Holmes collection was launched in the eighties. I offered one SH Original to my father. By chance, it was the rare 1990 System version. Now I own the entire collection of 14 different pipes, plus two sets the four pipes from the third series. I also own a lot of Petersonphernalia… lighters, pipe racks, etc.

Two years ago, I was lucky enough to find a rare Peterson tin tacker on a French online flea market — for less than the price of a brand-new Peterson rusticated! Of course, I bought it immediately. You can imagine how impatient I was to receive it.

Being a long-time Peterson aficionado, I of course read Peterson Pipe Notes on a regular basis and own the holy bible — I mean to say The Story of Kapp and Peterson — but I couldn’t find anything about this tin tacker in it.

So I sent some photos of my marvel to Mark.

His answer was: “Where the hell did you find that, old bean?” — or something like that. Of course, I was very proud of my find.

Now, thanks to Mark’s work, you can get a recreation of this rare piece of our favorite pipe brand’s history!

The IFS Tintacker: The Ultimate “Petersonphernalia”?

My exact words to Sébastien when I told me about the tintacker and sent me a photo were “Wh-wh-wh-wh-where–?” at which point my blood pressure dropped as I fell in a dead faint out of my desk chair.  Regaining consciousness and applying an ice pack to the side of my head, I wrote back a few minutes later for more information.

I believe it was at that point that he suggested we have reproductions made and distributed to Pete Geeks across the globe. “Nothing could be easier,” I said.  “I know a guy–.” That was about 18 months ago.

The first thing I knew we needed were a lot of photographs to see what we were looking at in terms of restoration, actual size, documentation, etc.  Here’s a few shots from the rolls Sébastien sent:

Notice the sign is two sided, has holes for nailing it to the wall (or presumably hanging), and is big: 18.5 in. x 8.25 in. (or 47 cm x 21 cm). Exactly what every Pete Geek requires for the garage, back porch, breezeway, boat house, studio, workshop, man cave, tobacco shop, workplace, dookie room, and all those other places we go for a quiet or sociable pipe.

So here it is in the cropped reference shot that would be used for restoration:

Not too bad, right?  But take a look a little closer up:

And finally, look at this really close up:

When I shared these images with Smokingpipes.com, they were understandably reluctant to take it on given the hundred hours or more of work it would need.  And I get it—when you look close at the image, there’s two thousand nicks, scratches, cuts, rust marks and paint pops that need to be restored.  So after making a few initial attempts of my own, there the project languished. With the deadline of the 1906 catalog and the sheer stultifying magnitude of the work, I walked away.  I had no idea how to restore two or three of the especially problematic areas.

Coming home from the Chicago Show, however, I felt a new burst of creativity and energy, and thinking the tintacker might look well in the next Peterson book, took a look. Unrestored, it’s so beat up that it really isn’t very appealing visually when reduced on the page In person, on your library wall—yes.  In a book—not really.  So I wondered yet again if this restoration was something I could do myself, and began devoting a little bit of time to problem-solving it every day.

Me as Ping Xio Po, energized after the Chicago Show

I began getting a Ping Xiao Po vibe after a week or so and the tintacker slid into my full time work project, going so well that I contacted Jen Kocher at Tintackers.com to see if she could reproduce it for us.  For her part, as a longtime enthusiast turned entrepreneur, she was entranced and said—in the parlance of my North Dallas students—Hellyeah!

Before sending it off, I had my partner, book designer, and color consultant look it over, who discovered a few things I was missing in the way the original artist had color-matched elements from stem and bowl. With that completed, the restoration was complete:

At this point, I needed to apply for licensing from Kapp & Peterson, because the Thinking Man (did you ever think about it?) is their intellectual property, even though they graciously allow me to use it here on the blog (“it’s educational”).  Sykes Wilford, ever the champion of PPN, got that arranged within a few days.

The next thing was to submit the artwork to Jen for a digital proof:

Take a look around the lettering, because here’s one happy surprise—the embossing! This was not a feature of the original, nor could it have been, since it was two-sided and artwork of course goes two ways. The tacker is just a very bit smaller than the original, by maybe an inch, due to the sheet sizes available.

Who Made It? When?

B.W. & M. Ltd

The tintacker was made by Barringer, Wallis & Manners, Ltd., in Mansfield, identified in an extreme detail photo from Sébastien. The company had a long and successful history, beginning in 1839.  After a fire in 1873, the company dedicated itself to tin products, making all manner of biscuit (cookie) boxes, tobacco tins, cake boxes, and signs.

The Rock Valley Works, c. 1914–about the time the tintacker was made.

In 1892, they installed a color offset lithographic printing press to allow them to print in color on their boxes. Both Etsy and eBay, as well as innumerable antique and junk shops across the globe, offer all manner of tin objects made by them, which can be searched as “B. W. & M. Ltd.”

The company would become Metal Box Company of Mansfield and continue producing color tinware until the late 1960s, I think, when the market for such goods drastically fell. They are reputed to have made cigarette and tobacco boxes as well, although I was unable to find any photographs.

Hallmarks C (1898) and G (1902)

Our tintacker has a “G” hallmark for the year 1902. The 1898, “C,” very similar, would have made perfect sense, as that was the year of the final patent and something to be celebrated.  But if you look long & closely, the letter is actually the Gaelic G.  I’m wondering if it wasn’t a mistake on the part of the artist.

The bowl makes no reference to “Peterson’s Patent Pipe,” as it must surely have done before 1910 when the original patent expired.  This is an important dating clue, since litigation was still being pursued before 1910 and when K&P routinely thought of themselves as producing not a System but a Peterson’s Patent pipe. The tintacker was therefore made after 1910. After the Great War ended in 1918, K&P turned to a new if short-lived icon, the Contented Man. The sign was therefore probably made between 1910 and 1918.

Contented Man Icon

Incidentally, from the ephemera and newspaper advertising, it looks as if they used the Contented Man through the 1920s. With the onset of the Great Depression, someone at the company wisely thought that perhaps there wasn’t much to be contented about. The Thinking Man returned in the 1930s as an icon suitable for all economic, spiritual, and political crises—which is a very good thing for us just now, I’m thinking.*

Where do I sign up?

• Price is $45 each including US Shipping
• Price is $60 each including International Shipping (this does NOT include any customs/import fees) 
• Deadline to place order: Monday, August 18, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. CST (GMT-6)
• You will be invoiced via PayPal when the tin tackers are ready for shipping
• Estimated to ship late-September to early-October 2025
• You MUST fill out the Google form below to order
• Questions? Send email to petegeek1896@gmail.com

PETERSON TIN TACKER SIGN UP FORM

Many, many thanks to Sykes Wilford,
Patron Saint of PPN

For More Information on B. W. & M. Ltd

http://www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk/themes/metalbox.htm#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20staff%20members%20had%20risen,printing%20and%20the%20manufacture%20of%20tin%20boxes 

https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/gallery/collection-pictures-remembering-mansfield-1900s-3746434 (women in factory)

http://www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk/themes/metalbox.htm#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20staff%20members%20had%20risen,printing%20and%20the%20manufacture%20of%20tin%20boxes.

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* this post powered by a 1999 transmission
sounds like 2025, yo?