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CHICAGO PIPE SHOW
Public Service Announcements

PADDY LARRIGAN, BROKEN PIPE, TBA
We will be honoring Paddy Larrigan at the show this year at some point,
who passed away on February 9th of this year.
If you have a 20s or a 314 (Paddy’s favorite shape), bring it as we raise a bowl of vintage Erinmore (Paddy’s favorite blend) for our tribute.

Friday @ 10-12am: Bowl Turning–A Virtual Tour at the Factory
with Glen Whelan, Giacomo Penzo & Mark Irwin
This presentation will give Pete Geeks and the general audience a close-up
and personal look at the stages of bowl turning, with a Q&A afterwards.

Friday @ 2-3pm: Pete Geek Meet
We’ll be showcasing some amazing Petes from the collections of
Mike Austin, Lance Dahl, Ken Sigel, and James Walsh
as well as discussing (with examples) shape evolution
from the Patent era to the present.
Do bring Petes you want to share with everyone. The PPN photographer will be there.

Saturday and Sunday at the Show
Peterson Pipe Notes will have a table right next to Gary Hamilton’s table
again, so do stop by for a chat. Ken Sigel is hosting the PPN table
and we’ll have good conversation, a few pipes & books, and a surprise I’ve been working on.

Smoking Tent
The Pete Freeks, Geeks, & Degens will be in full force in the smoking tent.
Look for the greatest crowd in the evening after dinner, from 7 or 8 to midnight.
Don’t be shy–come up and introduce yourself!

A preview of Gary’s table

AN UNKNOWN FRENCH PATENT COMPETITOR
TO THE PATENT SYSTEM?
by Sébastien Canévet

Last week, while browsing the usual online flea markets, I came across a pipe “in the style of Peterson.”My first reaction was, “yet another copy,” but just before moving on to the next listing, I noticed an unusual detail: the “button” had three holes instead of one.

 I looked carefully at the other pictures and eventually bought the pipe for the princely sum of ten euros (about twenty quid), just to be sure.

 Yesterday, I received the parcel, and… yes… I’m pretty sure this pipe is a French attempt to challenge the Peterson patent.  Let me explain my deduction, Watson—well, Mark.

This pipe bore the mark of a very famous clay pipe maker called Gambier on one side, and a strange inscription on the other: “Russe – breveté SGDG” (« Russian – patented without government guarantee »).  The markings were quite hard to read, but I have found online another pipe with the same marks.

Gambier was founded in northeastern France at the end of the eighteenth century and became a major factory, with 600 employees producing fifty million clay pipes each year by the mid-nineteenth century.

“Well, it’s a great pipe maker, Sébastien, but a CLAY pipe maker, and your find is a BRIAR one,” you might ask.Yes, you are perfectly right, my dear Watson.But at the end of the nineteenth century, the clay pipe market was in decline, giving way to briar pipes.

The production of the Gambier factory is fairly well known, as we have several different catalogues and price lists from various decades. In the 1896 catalogue, one can find several briar pipes offered for sale for the first time, among a large number of clay pipes. Gambier was attempting to compensate for declining clay pipe sales with new briar pipes. In fact, these pipes were not made by Gambier itself but in Saint-Claude, the main French centre of briar pipe production. One can easily identify several figural pipes made in Saint-Claude; I discussed this production in my article “Kapp & Peterson’s Early French-Made Figural Briars” a few years ago.

Well, that’s for the context, but what about the pipe itself? Please be patient, Watson.

The pipe itself looks pretty similar to a Peterson, with a little shorter shank.

Why do I think it is an attempt to challenge the successful Peterson patent system?In the Gambier 1896 catalogue, we can see a drawing showing the principle of operation of the “pipe russe.” It looks quite similar to the Peterson system, but with several differences designed to avoid infringing the Peterson patent.

The stem has three separate smoke passages instead of one, and of course three holes at the button. The inner part of the stem contains three small tubes instead of one (one is missing on my pipe, still uncleaned).

It is probably more difficult to clean than a Peterson system stem, although I can pass a pipe cleaner freely through each of the smoke passages.

I have some knowledge of Gambier production, and I own at least one hundred clay pipes from this factory, but I had never noticed before that they also produced briar pipes with a Peterson-like system.

It was not successful, just as the equivalent pipe by Adolph Frankau, the “Glokar,” was also unsuccessful.

Gene Umberger, Doctor of Pipes and CPG, recently sent me this off-the-radar (aka underground) news about a new pipe smoker’s accessory that seems to be spreading like wildfire among the global counterculture:

“Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge” Devices
About to Disrupt the Internet and Small-Screen Addiction”

Dark Web #711, April 1, 2026: “According to leading experts in world technology trends at a recent conference in Geneva, Switzerland, there has been a revolutionary breakthrough–or rediscovery–in technology that may disrupt the world as we know it. It has no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on.

“It’s so easy to use,” said one leading scientist, “that even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. It’s compact and portable, like the iPad and Kindle, but can be used anywhere from the beach to Big Bend National Park, with no fear of losing satellite or cell coverage as it requires no electricity. It is capable in many instances of holding more than a terabyte of information.

“Each device is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of biodegradable, recyclable material which can hold text as well as images. These sheets are locked together in a custom-fitted device to insure they remain sequenced. Using both sides of a sheet–as DVD manufactures discovered in the early 2000s–doubles the information and cuts costs in half. The sheets are built for optical recognition, although some devices are made for those with disabilities.

There are a few downsides. “While the devices can be accessed randomly, like the hypertext we’re familiar with, the ‘browse’ feature can be trickier than Facebook and Meta, since it is not set by an algorithm tailored to the viewer’s consumer, political, or sexual preferences. The devices rely, rather, on a accessing an alphabetic or alphanumeric index system that depends on the user having some idea of what she or he is looking for, rather than triggering an impulse buy. Many of those in the commercial world have already voiced their displeasure and are seeking injunctions with various governments to bar its use.”

“There are also inexpensive accessories which allow the BOOK to be opened at the exact place the viewer left off in a previous session. As these accessories–known for convenience as ‘BOOKmarks’–cannot be patented, there seems to be little future in them as serious commodities, although their universal application makes them capable of use in BOOKs made by any manufacturer.”

“A programming tool was also launched and discussed at the conference, one that has already made inroads in many academic settings. This programming tool at present has the awkward name of Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus. Used for decades  by the maths and scientific community, innovative companies like Blackwing are seeking to widen its application.”

I shared the news story above because my friend Kris Parry at the Black Swan Shoppe has recently stocked a handful of these devices. One of them has already sold out. If you live in the UK or Europe and haven’t visited his shoppe, treat yourself!

PPN will return April 3rd.