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public service announcement
MOTH DEMONSTRATOR PETE GEEK EVENT!

See end of post.

We began the Chicago show this year with a first-time visit to the legendary Iwan Reis shop in downtown Chicago. If you ever go, take the advice of The Peterson Piper–Josh Sherif–drive to the CTA train station near the Hyatt Regency and take the train in and back.  Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to drive. Like we did.  ‘Nuff said?

I call your attention to this magnificent metal sign, which hangs on the wall in back of the pipe counter at Iwan Reis.  I’m offering  No Prizes if you can identify (1) the approximate year the sign was made; (2) one factual mistake; (3) a second factual mistake. These inaccuracies were not intentional on the part of K&P, just the error cascade typical of a really old business–something to which any business can succumb, especially one as old as Peterson.

The “Bowl Turning at Peterson” event was held Friday morning from 10 to noon in the event “room” (actually the tent in back of the smoking tent). I will always ask for an indoor room after this. Andy Wike and Chris, Laudisi’s videographer, worked really hard to make a terrific 12 minute film for Glen Whelan and Giacomo Penzo to use in their presentation but the sun kept fading out the screen, making it difficult for everyone to see.  The questions which followed were good and I think everyone had an enjoyable and information time. Giacomo, I should add, brought bowls at each stage in the turning process for folks to examine, which were amazing. And one more note to note: SPC will be making this video available on their blog, with voice-overs from Giacomo and Glen, in the near future.

Following a break of an hour or so, the Pete Geek Meet was held in the same venue. The event was packed–I’m guessing maybe a hundred people?– a few more than the 13 or 14 we had at our first Meet a few years ago.  Mike Austin, Dan Chasin, Lance Dahl, Ken Sigel brought full tables of rare and exquisite Petes for everyone to view and ask questions.

For whatever reasons (brain haze on my part, I think) I only got a few photos of the tables, which was a real disappointment. Seen above is my glancing shot at James Walsh’s incredible table.  For this event, he brought his long-shanks (far right, and wow just look at the length of some of them), his beloved 53 lovats (middle and left, as well as a few in the lower center).

Martin Kollmann made a special show-only Pete Geek tee shirt.  I liked it so much I asked if PPN might make it a general release this summer, to which he agreed, so more on that PG Event in a few weeks.

Following a break of an hour or so, the Pete Geek Meet was held in the same venue. The event was packed–I’m guessing maybe 150 people?– a few more than the 13 or 14 we had at our first Meet a few years ago.  Mike Austin, Dan Chasin, Lance Dahl, Ken Sigel brought full tables of rare and exquisite Petes for everyone to view and ask questions. Martin Kollman CPG brought about 20 samples of his tobacco-blending art. It was difficult to choose just two, but here’s the ones I took back with me:

I can report that the Stout Shoveler Plug, which is the only one I’ve smoked so far, is surprising. It’s got sweetness, a dark-fired sensibility as the bowl progresses, and enough Vitamin N for either first thing in the day when you need a jolt, or in the evening when you’re trying to stay awake until bedtime.

The other blend, you’ll notice, is “Señor Winston.” I looked at that, looked again, then got on the phone to my vet to have talk to Winston, my Aussie. As my mother used to say when she was really irked with me, “I have a bone to pick with you.”

Now I did not give Winston permission to market his own brand, but now that he and Martin have let the cat out of the bag (or puppy, in this case), what can I do? Yes, I have been fielding phone calls from Hollywood. Tom Hanks, for one. Amblin Entertainment for another.  Hal Roach for a third.  But what really annoyed me even more was that after we got back from the show and I went to pick the pup up, I found out he’s been pawing out B&W glossies to everyone:

Well, back to reality. Things were so out-of-control crazy at the Pete Geek Meet that I didn’t get to see hardly any of the great pipes Dan, Mike, James and Lance brought.  I did get to see Ken table, but we were being told to pack up for the next event, so I didn’t get to stop and pick up individual pipes.

One of the most extraordinary Petes Ken brought was an unsmoked house pipe, second row down, fourth across, which he recently acquired. And somewhere on the table is a pipe engraved from as a gift from Charles Peterson to US President Taft.

Ken, I might add, had the good sense to insert tiny tazer-devices inside the chamber of each pipe, designed to discharge when the pipes were moved 5 feet away from the table.  Please don’t ask me how I know this.

The show on Saturday seemed bigger than last year to me, that is, it appeared there were more tables and more people. Someone told me there were 172 tables, which is still only a bit more than half of the 300 tables the show commanded “back in the day” at Pleasant Run, when there were collectors who wanted to show their collections and collectors who brought grocery bags of unrestored second-hand pipes to throw out on their tables.  Gene Umberger told me that far fewer foreign artisans attend now than before COVID, having learned how to survive during those two years without the show to promote them.

Glen Whelan was again at his own tables, right next to Smokingpipes.com, and this year Glen brought the most extraordinary array of Peterson high-grades ever seen at a pipe show.

As sorry as my photos are, you can still make out the DeLuxe Naturals with B stems. Two or three of the shapes–the 01 and the 9, I know for sure–looked like Patent B replicas, their stems were so long.

Someone asked Glen Whelan what were Peterson’s biggest sellers these days. You probably can guess–the blasts.  Josh Sherif / The Peterson Piper’s acquired an incredible Natural House Pipe blast, and while it’s way up in the stratosphere, being the kind of pipe brought especially for the show, it shows off what is being done:

Before you shoot off an email or text to Josh, be aware that I’ve already scratched my initials on the bottom of the bowl to remind him that this pipe is going to be too big for him when he wakes up and realizes this pipe is obviously too large for his smoking porch. Right, Josh?

Gary and Linda Hamilton (yes, that Linda, Linda Nicks Hamilton, the sister of Stevie Nicks, if you didn’t know) had another incredible table, and like the charmer Linda is (I don’t know where Gary was for most of the show), she told all of Gary’s pipes aside from the J. T. Cooke (which I need to make a deal for) as well as numbers of his leather work pipe rests and tamps.

The Hamiltons also received Best Dressed Couple at the Awards dinner. I betcha didn’t know they even had that award, did you? That’s because no one’s won it for the past 18 years, so slovenly have the sartorial habits of pipe smokers become.

Gigi and Ken Sigel operated what was really the Pete Geek table, where Ken offered his own Petes as well as those by Pete Despicables (or maybe that’s Deperadoes, I can never remember) Shimshon Cooke, Dan Chasin, and Lance Dahl. Notice that poster at the lower left hand corner, and the amputated hand thereon. We’ll come back to that later.

On Ken’s side of the table I found a 2nd year (HM 1988) Sherlock Holmes Original–the very first fishtail iteration featured in several magazine ads as well as a super-rare point-of-sale shop window sticker:

I’ve looked a long time for one of these F/T original-Originals.  This configuration–I think–was only made in 1987 (the centenary of Conan Doyle’s first Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet) and 1988. Then “the Original” went to the P-Lip tapered stem.

The sticker, incidentally was designed to be placed on the inside of the shop door, so that customers walking up will look at  the door and see it. Which reminds me, I took 3 of these stickers to sell at the show and forgot to put them out.  Be happy to sell you one or all three–just drop me a line ($15 each plus $5 postage).

I think most Pete Geeks found at least one, if not several, great Petes.  I’m hoping to share some of those with you next week. In the meantime, here’s two more to anticipate next week. The first is an amazing 406 Apple. Looks like it’s from the Dunmore Classic Range, right? Nope. It’s before that.

It’s the Kapp-Royal version, which debuted through Iwan Reis in 1969 for $25. Cole Bonifacius found it for–I kid you not–$45. And look at this one, a shape 78 Dunmore Premier that Josh Sherif found for around $100:

This is the System shape 9, incidentally. It also has my initials scratched on the bottom for when Josh is finished with it.

Now before I forget it, you have to see these amazing Dan Butler pipes. While the draw is far too open for me, I know he sold all six in just a few hours, and I believe they all sold to Pete Geeks!

One of the great things about this year’s show was that I got to meet a few Pete Geeks I’ve only known through the blog, like Christine Glasheen. Now Christine came up with a remarkable idea: she bought her Peterson from Glen and Giacomo and had them sign her bag!  That’s what I call an inspired idea.  Of course, when I asked them to sign my bags, they were always busy helping other customers… apparently you had to buy a pipe first. Go figure.

As this was the 30th anniversary of the show, one of the members brought stacks of many of the show posters from the past, all $5 each. They don’t issue a show poster anymore, but when I saw this one I couldn’t resist:

The 2002 date is fascinating to me. If you’ve read The X Pipe, you know when P.A.D. entered the lexicon and how quickly it became universally known and comically lamented.

The smoking tent is as important to the Chicago show as the exhibition in most everyone’s opinion.  Giacomo Penzo and Josh Sherif are seen above, discussing Giacomo’s next Peterson designs (shhh! industrial secrets). It was incredible, by the way, to meet Giacomo and get to talk to him about his work for K&P and how the entire bowl turning team collaborates.

And this is the overcrowded Pete Geek table, with my friend Chip Edwards at the far left presiding. He’s presiding not only because he’s my friend, but because he was asked by the show authorities to keep an eye out for “the boys in the back room” in case they should get too rowdy.  I left before the bottles started flying and the shillelaghs came out when the PGs got ready to rumble with the Dunnies over which marque made the greatest pipes.  I can’t tell you how it came out (legal issues), but I can say posting bail wasn’t a problem for anyone except the guy in the blue tee shirt and the old codger with his hand up at the bottom left.

…to be continued

THE PETE GEEK
PETERSON MOTH DEMONSTRATOR
EVENT

Most of what can be said about the Moth Demonstrator is found below in the poster I created for the show.

Back in the 1920s and 30s there were two versions of the Demonstrator giveaway, the one I restored and took to the show & for this PG Event and also a Bee Demonstrator, which can seen on the back side of the Moth Demonstrator (seebelow). I first saw the Moth version on the internet around 2007 or 2008, and I believe Jim Lilley at his blog may also have reproduced an image of the Bee.

Lance Dahl is the only person I know who has an original Moth, aside from two Moths held by Peterson. One of theirs was in the Sallynoggin museum in 2013. Seen above, Gigi scanned it for use in the Peterson book. The other Moth was at the shop on Grafton Street. Whether it migrated with them to the Nassau Street store I haven’t heard, but when Lance asked Glen about it at last year’s Chicago show, Glen knew all about it and how it was used. He told me at this year’s show that when he worked at the shop as a young man the Moth was kept in the till and sometimes pulled out for customers.  Once in a while, he said, the Moth would get “lost,” and they’d panic, then pull out the drawer of the till, where it was inevitably nesting.

from the collection of Lance Dahl*

Lance brought his Demonstrator to last year’s Las Vegas Pipe Show, it was agreed that there ought to be a reproduction made for Pete Geeks to enjoy. I took the job on myself as something I enjoy, but difficulties eventually blotted it out of my mind. In February I remembered it, which began a long trek.  The first thing to do was seek licensing from K&P, which was granted. Then came the restoration, and while restoring something so small sounds like it should be easy, it seemed to take as long as some projects many times larger.  That done, it was an arduous quest to find a printer. Here’s where it almost failed.  Very few printers in the US, it seems, can do a small die cut using heavy cardboard anymore. I eventually found CatPrint.com and their amazing rep Julian, and he and I spent another two weeks getting the project fine tuned.

Here’s the restoration printed for the show and this event:

The limited edition “eclipse” (what you call a large number of moths) of 125 arrived just two days before our departure, which just (barely) gave me time to glue all the little metal weights on the wings.  These, by the way, are magnets, so you can perch your Moth on the fridge or any other suitable metal object.  Winston Toodle Toots claimed one of them during the gluing process, so I spent the next hour trying to decide whether he’d swallowed one or two magnets.  One, says the vet, isn’t much of a problem. But if he swallowed both of them, it could’ve killed him. I’m happy to report he’s asleep behind me, so I’m thinking maybe he didn’t eat both of them.

US Price: $15, which includes shipping. If you order more than one, Gigi will combine shipping for you.
Outside of the US Price: $30, which includes shipping. If you order more than one, Gigi will combine shipping.

DEMONSTRATOR MOTH ORDER FORM

I want to share a recent Austin Quinlan release in case you missed it.  The copy writer at SPC has this to say about it: “Quinlan reverently refers to this iteration as the Caisleán, or “Castle” in Irish. From the flanks of the shank and stem to the fore of the bowl, the composition is underscored by a continuously flowing ridgeline that simultaneously imbues the overall profile with graceful, languid curvature, yet lends the already rigid, muscular bowl up front an additional architectural quality by way of a chiseled, lifted heel. This shaping is not unlike that of a castle: solid, sturdy, and regal. The stummel’s graceful, regal form is emphasized by a smooth, chestnut finish and so, too, is the briar’s gorgeous grain: Maelstroms of birdseye swirl around the rim and the stummel’s curved panels, while tendrils of flame grain climb the bowl’s walls. Combining stoic rigidity with graceful fluidity, and dressed in a timeless, sophisticated finish, this distinctive bent Dublin will make a standout addition to any pipe collection.”

Clint Stacey CPG sent a remarkable example of Peterson history from the Second Boer War (1899-1902), a Patent System carved with British POW names. Unlike some museum examples of these pipes, this one is not only a Patent System, but it’s not engraved by someone in a camp who was a talented carver, but obviously by the prisoner and his friends:

Clint said it was filthy and begrimed when he received it. You can see it’s one of the smaller Systems–and I’ll leave you to find which one (for a No Prize) in your 1896 catalog–and that it was smoked and smoked and smoked. The chamber has been reamed over and over again, the rim looks like it may have been topped at one point, and the P-Lip button (which is the only way this pipe was made at the time) either chewed off or removed by the owner. Like I said, a remarkable bit of history.

KEN SIGEL’S
CATCH & RELEASE

Ken has two amazing Silver Gray NAP System estate pipes he would like to trade for Patent Era or pre-1938 hallmarked Peterson pipes.  If you’re interested, contact him at kgsigel@gmail.com. If you’re unfamiliar with Silver’s NAP stems, type “NAP” in the search box and you’ll be directed to several posts on the recreation of Charles Peterson’s almost mythic NAP stem.

PUB PIPE

9B w/TWO STEMS (OEM Stem not pictured)

Ken also sent photos of this DeLuxe 120 with bone tenon that he acquired for restoration. It’s cleaned up and ready to smoke, and he’d like to pass it along to another Pete Geek for exactly what he paid for it: $75 + shipping + tax =$89.81:

Intellectual property of Kapp & Peterson
reproduced by their gracious permission.

From Tabbakuk’s Notebook

When I was introduced to Mother Teresa in Kolkatta thirty five years ago, she smiled, took me by both hands and asked me if I would come scrub floors the following morning. And I did, selfishly hoping for a word alone with her.  It was strange to be there, down on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and people whose language I didn’t speak laying in beds around me, emaciated and poor beyond description.  Mother Teresa walked through a few times, this little woman with bent shoulders and the energy of a titan, but she never saw me.

I finished around noon and was just walking out when she spotted me and came to the door.  “We all have a part to play in God’s glorious plans. Even if you write a letter for a blind man, or just sit and listen to someone, or you take the mail for him, and you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody, or wash clothes for somebody or clean the house–small things, but these are great things in the eyes of God.” Then she took my head in her hands and kissed me on the forehead. “You gave Jesus a drink of water this morning, but he is thirsty. Go home and see who else is thirsty.” And that was it. Maybe sixty seconds.

I thought about that minute all those years ago on the flight home after the Chicago Pipe Show. There were people I know who wouldn’t make eye contact when they walked past me. There were a lot more who didn’t know me at all but would smile and exchange some words or even talk for a few minutes. There were some who were there for the first time and needed someone to talk to them or sit with them in the smoking tent. Someone who could get excited over the pipe they’d just found or the celebrity they’d just met.

brought to you by
CHIMPSPANNERMOEBIUS

*I made two 13 x 19 prints on Canon Semi-Gloss photo paper, numbered and signed. If you’re interested in 2/2, drop me a line at petegeek1896@gmail.com. I’d like to see it go to a good PG Pipe Lounge.

My friends at the Pipe Club of Hyderbad sent me a left-handed coffee mug via K T.
How they knew I was left-handed?  It’s strange to actually see the logo on a mug for the first time in my life.