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As the saying goes, sometimes you get the bear (pronounced “bar” in The Great Lebowski) and sometimes the bar gets you. Well, the bear got me a couple of week ago. I saw this 312 NOS with all the ephemera on eBay and thought I really, really need this. Not because of the pipe, as I have a beautiful 312 Premier from the Early Republic with a much lighter stain. No, because of that Chat Brochure. And that box.

Everyone has their Pete passions. For some it’s eras. For some it’s COM stamps. For some it’s shapes. For some it’s lines. For some it’s ephemera as a whole.  And for me? Well, like so much in my life, it’s complicated.  I love ephemera, but I love primarily because it tells a story. If I see a box I don’t have—like this one, which is incidentally, the same wider shape employed on the 1975 Centenary boxes—that interests me. Or if it’s a special version of a shape—like the “Fat Boy” 302 Chris Lauer recently acquired (see “Collector’s Corner” below)—that interests me. Or may it’s the first SH Original, the F/T stem version, which Lance Dahl sold me at a price well below market value at the Chicago show.* But I digress.

I gifted this set to someone once upon a time, the most astonishingly complete I’d ever seen.
Please don’t ask if I sometimes wish I had it back.

Boxes and pipe box brochures and pipe socks and Gratis Pipe Tools and even pipe box guarantees: these used to be routine for anyone making a Peterson pipe purchase. The Good Old Days.

The first years of the blog I talked about all these time and again, hammering the point as often as possible that a great deal of what we know of Peterson pipes comes down to us through K&P’s disposable advertising ephemera.  Don’t take me wrong—every other pipe maker I know thinks the same.  I suppose it’s only hobbyists who can indulge in the pursuit of material culture, and that’s simply one of the great divides between us and them. The recent reproduction of the century-old Moth Demonstrator is of course a case in point. It might so easily have happened that none of the moths survived. So, “on with the show!” as Our Gang said.

Notice the upper right hand corner of the box—this really excited my passion for Peterson history. A source in Australia? A clue to the Mystery of Peterson in Australia? “But wait, there’s more!” as they used to say in TV commercials.

Lookit, gang! A “Chat” box brochure I have never seen. The “Chat” brochures always tell part of the Peterson story, and to let this one escape would be a crime against myself.

So I set my sights and my bidding and … lost. Judge, jury, and executioner.

Something like this has actually happened to me before. I wrote the seller to see if he’d send me scans of an important catalog that I had lost in an auction.  He of course said no.  By God’s own grace, it was bought by our very own Deadman, Todd Becker, and when he found out Todd went so far as to mail it to me to scan and share it out with everyone on the blog. That’s why Todd is one of the only men I know who crosses that Great Divine between Trade and Hobby.

Having lamented this for perhaps a week, I went back to study the photos, which were actually fairly comprehensive apart from the lack of focus on the pipe itself (I like really crisp accurate photos of the bowl’s grain, the ferrule or band, and the condition of the stem). And here’s what I found out.

Damman’s of Melbourne

With nothing but the name (presumably) of the tobacconist and the city, I went first to hunt out a street directory of Melbourne. It turns out there was a standard one, Sands & McDougall’s Directory of Victoria. The State Library of Victoria holds 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1970, and 1974. The box looks nearly identical to one seen in a photography from the 1950s of the shipping department at the St. Stephens Green factory. I opened the 1955 Sands & McDougall and found there weren’t but eight “Dammans” in Victoria:

Damman, G. & Co, Py Ld, 221 Colllns-st. O.l
Damman, Mrs E. M. A., 21 Gumer-st, St. K.. 8.3
Damman, Mrs Ruby. 365 Dandenong-rd, Arm.,S.E.3
Damman, O. G „ 18 Williams-rd, Pra.
Damman, Oscar G., 21 Murchison-st, Blclva., S.16
Damman, S. E., Range View-crt, Crydn.
Damman. Percy. 72 Queen’s-n). 8 C 3
Dammann Asphalt k Cnstrctn Co, Cowper-

“Py Ld” means Proprietary Limited, more or less the equivalent of “Incorporated” or “Ltd” in the US, indicating a private business.

Satisfied I was on the right track, I began a general search of “Damman,” “Damman tobacconist” and related searches. My next stop was at the National Library of Australia’s online digital collections. I went first to Trove, the digitized newspaper collection, where I struck gold in an article from the Melbourne newspaper The Age, Saturday July 31^st, 1954, “City Grew Up Around Tobacco Shop.”

I know about half of PPN’s readers are viewing this on their phones, and more power to you if you can enjoy it this way, but as there is now a generation growing up without the wonderment of reading a genuine print newspaper, here’s what one looked like:

Now because it’s such a kick, I want to show you the entire page:

Find the article on nuclear power in the US, then look around your home and wonder where it all went wrong.

Reading about George Damman’s hope as a miner in Australia’s goldrush, I found a gold rush glass plate photograph at the NLA that gives you a sense of what the country was like when he arrived.

Still roaming the digital stacks of the NLA (I’m a confirmed bibilioholic), I stumbled on a commemorative brochure Damman’s printed for their centenary that gives us even more history of this fabled pipe and tobacco shop, Australia’s version of Iwan Reis (and hopefully less grumpy than their American counterpart):

There’s not too much more to tell. I did find a short piece on Facebook of Damman’s Corner and a photo from 1964:

Damman’s Corner, Melbourne. 1964

“This shot looks south along Swanston Street from the Collins Street intersection, with the Shrine of Remembrance visible at left, ahead on St Kilda Road.

“Dammans was by this time an institution on this corner, indeed the corner was known as Damman’s Corner. The business was established in 1854, when Melbourne was just 19 years of age.

“The Damman Brothers began as manufacturers of cigars and high quality, hand-made pipes for smokers. In the days before packaged cigarettes, they employed cigarette tailors to fashion hand-rolled cigarettes to customer’s requirements.

“At the time of this shot, they still produced ’tailor-made’ cigarettes along with supplying all kinds of smoker’s needs (lighters, cigarette cases etc.) and a large range of shaving equipment and other male toiletries.

“Soon after this shot, the old store was replaced with a 16 storey tower for The Bank of NSW (now Westpac). Along with the new building came a new name: The Wales Corner. (photo credit. Herald Sun Archives)”

I also found a tobacco tin for Damman’s Aromatic, which reminds me to ask vintage tobacco enthusiasts if these were recyclable. That is, looking at some of my early 20^th c. St. Bruno tins, it appears that these were meant to be taken back to be refilled. Does anybody know about this?

I don’t mind missing out on the 312 Premier, or even the box. But that brochure!

Images from the Victoria State Library
and National Library of Australia
reproduced by permission.

 “KAPNISMOLOGY”
by Chas. Mundungus

If you’re of “an age” (viz., old guy), you remember a great print magazine called The Pipe Collector. The publisher, who wasn’t even a pipe smoker, wanted to create a hobby magazine and, looking around and seeing so many pipemen, thought this would be a great idea. He then wanted a distinctive word to describe people who collect pipes. After all, there are “arctophiles,” “cartophilists,” “deltiologists,” “lepidopterists,” “numismatists,” and “philatelists,” not to mention my three self-descriptive passions (aside from pipes): “bibliophile,” “cinephile” and “discophile.”

So he came up with kapnis (smoke) and phile (lover), kapnismology being the impassioned study or deep interest in same. And why not, I ask?  It seemed to catch on, for at least awhile. As I told Gene Umberger recently, I tried to use it as a grad student at least two dozen times a day. Well, to be honest, I still use it.  Of course, I had to go and make a pun using it for everyone who’s passionate about Peterson pipes: Kappnismology. And now that I think of it. . .

Isn’t the Kapp family name ultimately derived from this Greek word for smoke? Yes, we all know it comes from the Middle High German word kappe meaning “hood,” “cape,” or “cap” and was given to hoodmakers, cloakmakers and maker of headwear.  But—little known fact—these guys wore their hoods, caps and cloaks to keep their pipes from going out!  True story. Just ask me.

So why am I tell you all of this, besides wanting you to use both kapnismology and Kappnismology as often as possible? Because Gene Umberger also sent me a quote from a great article that you should be aware of, especially given the current crisis in higher education.

“The article,” Gene writes, “is ‘The Fellowship of the Pipe’ (Cigar and Tobacco World, vol. 39, p504–5, June 1927). It starts off  ‘At the “Pipes Session” on May 4 the chair was occupied by Mr. W.P. Solomon, and a paper prepared by Mr. Herbert Dunhill of Messrs. Alfred Dunhill, Ltd., was read by Mr. A.E. Ormen Sperring, editor of the Cigar and Tobacco World.” Eventually you come to this:

“The Universities remain the great strongholds of pipe smoking, and any ‘man’ who has not furtively indulged when at school will find it difficult to avoid learning the art at college. Pipe smoking is a fine art, and fine taste and fine practice are essential to success. Anyone can purchase a pipe and tobacco; but it is only one with exquisite taste and a refined palate who knows a poor from a fine pipe, how to feed it properly, and how to keep it in perfect condition. Many people think that a man’s education in the arts of life is not complete unless he goes to university. Am I extravagant, therefore, in expressing surprise that there is not at any university, as far as I know, a professor of the art of pipe-smoking? Perhaps some day—some day soon we may hope—one of our many tobacco millionaires will endow a chair of tobacco? Other matters of learning of far less importance have already thus been assisted.”

“Hah. Herbert Dunhill (one of Alfred’s brothers) was way ahead of his time.”

Michael Mikropolous CPG writes, “I’m sending to tell you my pipe news. My Peterson collection is constantly growing and now has more than 350 pipes. If you remember my goal with the wooden map of Ireland, is almost complete. I will send you photos when it is ready. Also, my goal to collect all the B shapes is going well, as I have found 56 out of 60. Today I’m sending you a photo of my complete collection of bent Dunmores in all shapes from 70 to 79.

Best wishes from Greece,

Michael

Chris Lauer CPG and I have practically identical tastes in Peterson pipes and hardly a week goes by that we don’t alert one another about a great find. For his part, Chris has demurred and let me get the pipe on at least half a dozen occasions. I don’t know that I’ve done him the same service, but I did alert him to my favorite 302 iteration, the “Fat Boy,” which appeared in one of Ian’s eBay listings last week. It’s the smooth—which I don’t have—but I’m pleased Chris was able to add it to his cenobium of pipes:

Asa Kollmann recently gifted me an XXL Pocket Jar which he made on his 3D printer. It’s quite awesome, or, as Asa might say, it has “insane aura”:

*Having said this, I hasten to add that I can always be wrong (unless I’m talking to James Walsh, then I’m always right). Nate Lynn, one of the most enthusa sent me one of those highly irritating texts not long ago with purported photos of his 1987 SH Original with a P-Lip, of all things. As if. We all know Nate specializes in AI constructions. Now I’m not saying Nate fabricated his pipe, but note how blurry the photos are:

1997 Original P-Lip.

1990 F/T

Intellectual property of Kapp & Peterson
used by their kind permission.

PPN will return on June 14th.