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PSA
THE TEXAS PIPE SHOW IS ALMOST HERE!
Friday and Saturday, November 14th Peterson Pipe Notes will have a table this year
with books, tintackers, estate Petes from Ken Sigel, Gary Hamilton, and myself,
all under the supervision of our resident den mother Gigi.
See Texaspipeshow.com for more info.

THE 2025 LAS VEGAS INTERNATIONAL PIPE SHOW
(Part 1)

“…the most remarkable gathering
of vintage and historic Peterson pipes
since the 2019 Chicago Show.”

The 2025 Las Vegas International Pipe Show (LVIPS) took place last weekend at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino. It’s the first time I’ve been back since launching the Peterson bible in 2019 and while the hotel hadn’t changed, the show has. It’s been under the aegis of Dave Peterson and Brian Levine for a few years now and I’ve gotta hand it to them that organizing and conducting a show of this size with just the two of them and a few slaveys is flat out amazing.

Friday afternoon we rallied around Dan Chasin CPG, the chief administrator of Pipe Smokers of Ireland on Facebook (PSOI) to see his ab-so-lutely amazing collection of Sherlock Holmes Squire pipes:

Dan Chasin’s SH Squires

It’s much smaller than Chicago (the world’s biggest) but it was big enough to hold my interest and attention from our Thursday night arrival to a mid-Monday afternoon departure. That was due in good measure to the Pete Geeks and PSOI who attended, but also to the vendors, artisans, and other pipemen.

The show’s particular charm has always been that smoking is allowed.  There’s also a smoker’s lounge that occupies an open area off the side of the show, allowing everyone to take a seat, get a drink, smoke and socialize. I love the smoking tent at Chicago, but somehow the Vegas smoker’s lounge seems more open, and perhaps being smaller, things seemed to slowed down to facilitate more socialization.

That evening those who could make it went for a commencement PG dinner at McMullan’s Irish Pub, which not only served a “perfect pint” of Guinness, but had the added attraction of serving Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and Most Excellent fish & chips (sob, no mashy peas!). The pub food and décor was exceptional, as was our hostess, who allowed us to smoke our pipes out on the patio after dinner.

K. T. Prasad, from Hyderabad in southern India (right)
and his nephew Ranga, an engineer living in Vegas.

The main event—the Saturday show—is nearly impossible to describe to someone who’s never been to a pipe show.  While a few of the big vendors like Smokingpipes.com and Pipes & Cigars were there, what really makes a show a pipe community event is that most tables are hosted by artisans, part-time artisans, estate dealers, and hobbyists all there to sell, of course, but also to share their stories and their lives. No PBFs (phony business friends) among them—every single one pursuing the passion of pipes.

PETE GEEK MEET

Thanks CPGs Lance Dahl, James Walsh, and Dan Chasin, this was the most remarkable gathering of vintage and historic Peterson pipes since the 2019 Chicago Show. I can’t say it more forcefully.  The collecting interests of these three gentlemen were historically synchronous, allowing us to follow the history of the Peterson pipe by following their pipes.

Lance’s great passion lies in the Patent through the Early Republic eras, James’s in the Republic era, and Dan’s in the Dublin and Laudisi era.  There were fascinating pipes and never-before-seen pipes from any era in each of their collections, and in Parts 2 and 3 of this history I’ll document the pipes Lance and James brought, as I was able to spend a few hours in their rooms photographing each of their pipes individually.

Our meet was held Sunday morning at 10.  The show opened at 9, which gave us a bit of time to set up. While we were told we had tables and a time, what happened in fact was that there were not tables and our meet was not put on the schedule–either online or at the show–and the host would not announce our meeting.  Sigh. This type of mix up is routine—especially at shows that don’t know or value Peterson (um, like this one).  Undeterred, we were able to get finagle tables for the presentation, and while James, Dan, and Lance were setting up, the rest of us went out like the disciples “two by two” to find, recruit, and inform our friends of the Pete Geek Meet.

It was quiet enough Sunday morning and easy enough to move from the lounge to show floor, that there was always a small crowd until the call for food finally forced us to close up shop around 3pm or so.

Gary Malmberg (left)

Several visiting luminaries of the pipe world stopped by to look at the awesome array of Petes, including my old friend Gary Malmberg, the co-author of the Peterson book, who was there from Colorado with his son Max Kapps on business.  We even managed to steal Steve Mawby CPG away from the SPC table for a few minutes!

James Foster (right)

James Foster CPG, co-administrator of the Texas Pipe Show, was there with his cousin Carolina Henry, both of them smoking 2025 Peterson Halloween Systems.

Martin Kollmann brought samples of his tobacco-blending art.

It was also a joy to meet several Pete Geeks I’ve emailed or known from comments on the blog—Martin Kollmann and his friend Andy, Ed Patton, Mark Berman, and Andy Camire to name a few. Martin brought about a dozen of his blends, sharing them amongst us and getting rave reviews.

Amado Torres

I got to visit with Amado Torres from PSOI and look at his fantastic Centenary 86 saddle with its rare shamrock stamp. And Ed Patton CPG brought me a beautiful Mark Twain from either 1981—one of the original 400, right Ed?—to try and not drool over. Then he pulled out an amazing little 1920 HM “Joy” straight billiard—at least, that’s what we decided it was, placing it over the image in the 1906 catalog reprint.

Richard Harris smoking his ever-present DeLuxe 9S in Juggernaut (1974)

You know I’m a big movie hound, and Tim Hynick CPG—our very own Pete Geek Ambassador at the 2024 CORPS pipe show—told me I needed to check out Richard Harris smoking a 9s De Luxe throughout the 1974 suspense thriller Juggernaut, where Harris races to defuse a bomb aboard a cruise ship. I’m hoping to screen it next weekend when the DVD arrives.

Nevatitude (Mark Hunt), Sarah and David

Thanks to Abba Mark Hunt’s Spanish language proficiency, I also got to meet David Castellblanch and Sarah Bruken of Bruken Pipas. Sarah’s great-great-grandfather (if I have that straight) was Kapp & Peterson’s major briar supplier beginning in 1914.  I’m hoping to learn much, much more about the history of her family’s company and its relationship with Peterson in the coming days.

Adam Floyd signing copies of his new book, Tales of Fire and Briar.

I was also really blessed with a few minutes talking to Adam Floyd CPG, better known to the world as YouTube’s most popular piper’s vlog “Get Piped” and who made the 2023 Chicago show so awesome for the Pete Geek Meet.

Adam not only took time away from his table to drop by our meet, but spent quite a bit of time discussing various pipes with Lance and James and Dan. Later on, I made it to Adam’s table to pick up a copy of his new must-have book, Tales of Fire and Briar, which is is must-have reading. I’ll post my own review in the next few posts.

I also really enjoyed getting acquainted with K. T. Prasad, who lives in southern India, has smoked a pipe for over 40 years, and had a 38-year career with British Tobacco India. In Hyderabad he’s part of the local pipe club and when he returns home in a month or two I hope to do a post on his club and their passion for Petes.

One of the early chapters of my philosophical novel The X Pipe concerns the Five Laws of Pipe Companioning, which had their source in a pipe and tobacco shop in 19th century Chennai (modern-day Madras). India has been on my travel bucket list and Indian classical music a passion (both Carnatic and Hindustani) since I saw Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar perform with George Harrison on his 1974 Dark Horse tour.  So to hear from K. T. and then get to meet and visit with him over the course of the show was amazing.

And finally, there were the artisans we met. Wow.  Yes, we’re Pete Geeks first, but many of us came away with treasures from some of the finest pipe makers in the world.

Dan Chasin and Micah Cryder (Yeti Pipes)

Probably my favorite new pipe of the entire show (aside from Dan Butler’s) is the one seen above Micah Yeti Cryder made for Dan Chasin. Dan also brought back amazing examples of the artisan work of Kevin Foster (an airline pilot by day) and of one of my favorites, Jeremiah Sandahl, whose work Gigi and I have followed for at least a decade at the Chicago show.

Kevin Foster

Jeremiah Sandahl

James brought back an incredible smooth / rustic squat rhodesian from carver J.P. Urqiza:

This is the barest tip of the iceberg, of course, as everyone who came to the show took home treasures—pipes, tobaccos, accessories of every kind. Kudos if you can name the Peterson shape this resembles.

I’ll transition to the last section of Part 1 with some beautiful Petes Lance Dahl brought back with him:

Lance’s Treasures

AN “IRISH SCHOOL” OF PIPE MAKING?

If you’ve been a piper for very long you’ve doubtless heard of the various “schools” of pipe design: the Danish (beginning in the 1950s), the Italian schools (one for north, one for south), the Japanese. Each has particular shared aesthetic characteristics.  Interestingly, no one has come forward to write authoritatively about such an important subject.

I’ve never heard anyone, for example, talk about classic English shapes as a “school,” although from our historical vantage looking back, they certainly were.  Same with the French—while there are overlaps, there are some quite distinctive shapes in the French “school.”

But what about an “Irish school”? I know the industry’s Johnny Too Bizzies will just pass this over, but we can give it a few minutes’ thought.

Dan Butler holding one of his System homages. Dan, I’m excited to say, sold every pipe he brought to the show by the first hour Sunday morning.

First, it was artisan Dan Butler who coined the term. He came up at the Meet and said, “Hey, have you guys ever considered the possibility that there is an Irish school of pipe-making, and it’s really under-represented in the artisan world?”

As soon as he said it, heads began nodding.

Dan’s 02 and 06 System Homages: He could’ve sold these pipes 4 or 5 times, and that was just in my hearing.  You can get in touch with him HERE before his commission list gets much longer!

Let’s approach this in reverse. Dan Butler brought two Patent System homages to the show. Not reproductions, but artisan homages: the petite 06 and the larger 02. They both have reservoirs, condensers (one in ebonite, one in aluminum) and, like Gary Hamilton’s work, fishtail stems. Dan’s smoke channels, like Peterson’s, have graduated bores. And wow they smoke well (hmm, how would I know that?).

Then no less than Micah Yeti Cryder put it out on one of his Instagram reels, made the night he got home: “I first heard the idea of an Irish School at this show, and I think that’s right,” or words to that effect (go watch it for yourself). Micah, in fact, brought a mostly completed pipe taking the Sherlock Holmes Baskerville for its design cues. And he wants to do one based on the current “slipper” version of the classic 999.

Giacomo Penzo, the young Italian artisan and Peterson’s Pipe Specialist, says he’s always loved Peterson’s 309, and in 2020 created not one but two homage versions of it, one with a boxwood faux ferrule and another with a real copper ferrule. Those who read books (and not park them at the side of the bed like some folk we know, LOL) can read about that adventure in the 2021 revision of The Pipes of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes, or even read about the making of the second of the homages in a post on this very blog in Post #200.

Back up a step and you’ve got Silver Gray, who brought several of her pipes with the clamshell button she’s developed from Charles Peterson’s original NAP button (Post #144). These stems are now a regular part of her work:

This canoe has the double homage of using a bowl shape seen in one of the Dublin era’s many B shapes and the Patent NAP, as so elegantly evolved by Silver.

Then there’s other stray examples, like this striking dutch billiard by Scottie Piersel (the Pencil Shank artisan), which was made in 2021. Oh how I love this pipe! Does it look to you like maybe, just maybe, she had Peterson’s shape 4 / 309 in mind?

Back up just one more step.  I’m not familiar with the evolution of shapes at the English or French factories, but I do know a thing or two about the design language of K&P. I’m not going to unload this whole thing on you here, but I think Peterson’s 160 year-old design language has evolved in five stages. Whether we incorporate the notion of evolution within a pipe maker in the “school” metaphor or not, there is undeniably a foundation worth considering.

Charles Peterson

1. Patent Shapes of Charles Peterson (1890 – c. 1937). You can study these in the 1896 and 1906 catalog. There are some that take their cues from English pipes, but in nearly every case you can see the fingerprints of Mr. Peterson.
2. Éire to Centenary (c. 1937 – 1975). The first sea change we can detect is in a muscular expansion of some of the shapes (like the 9 / 307) and then a stripping away of the heaviness of some others (like the original 02) and then a subtle retooling of still others (like the Apple and Dublin Systems with their thicker shanks or the abandonment of the original “John Bull” 999’s chubbiness, for reasons that I can’t explain).
3. 3. Centenary to end of Late Republic (1975 – 1990). The Centenary brought an explosion of creativity to K&P, with new System shapes and transitions in existing Classic Range shapes.
4. The Dublin era (1990 – 2017). This was the pinnacle of design expansion, with new shapes being added annually to the catalog, trickling from the top lines down to the entry grades. Every single year was incredible, seeing what the company would come up with. The end of the era, at least for us as hobbyists, saw most of these disappearing, some of which ought to have remained as being iconically Irish and some merely “quaints” (and I’d love to do a post about those).
5. Laudisi (2017 – Present). Stasis and historical homages have thus far marked the design language of this era, although there have been some wonderful exceptions. The problem with most of the high watermarks—at least for the hobbyist—is that they’ve been one-offs, and once sold, they were gone. We’re so fortunate to have the 4 / 309 back, but wouldn’t it have been marvelous if Giacomo Penzo’s 2024 Squat Baskerville POY System had remained in the catalog? Or this year’s amazing oom paul POY? These, I know, are questions that the industry side can give complicated answers to, none of which would probably satisfy us, LOL. This era has had no end of problems in maintaining the integrity of certain bowl shapes (the B42, the 05, and so on), yet with in-house bowl-turning I think we’ll begin to see some standardization return. I heard at the Vegas show, for instance, that the new 05 shape is one developed by Giacomo Penzo to alleviate burnout problems that were being reported in the earlier 05.

To conclude, while I’ve indulged in some “rule of thumb” simplification here, and this all needs unpacking, by and large, I think that if by “Irish school” we can incorporate the concept of design language evolution within a company that is then embraced by the artisan community, that we may very well be seeing the beginning of an “Irish school.”

Thanks to Dave Peterson at the LVIPS show for his hospitality;
photos by Dan Chasin, James Walsh, Lance Dahl, Mark Hunt & C. Mundungus.

There are a few tintackers left–
Now don’t let yourself be bereft–
You know you need another–
Whether for girlfriend, wife, or mother– 
Just say NO to future regret–
And so you don’t forget–
Order another two before midnight tonight!

Probably Last Chance Tintacker Signup Form

“tick, tick, tick”

So it was kinda scary to go into the men’s room the first day of the show and see this thing.  You gotta ask who thought this name up. Probably someone in the mob, maybe Robert De Niro or Al Pacino.  I confess I had to take a few steps back, close my eyes, aim and shoot, hoping for the best.