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The Charles Peterson Memorial

We’ve reached 17% as of Saturday evening, per the GoFundMe page. If you scroll through the list of donors you’ll see many names familiar to you through PPN as well as an astounding $1K gift from Anonymous—a long-time tobacconist and Pete lover who asked me to encourage other shop owners to send something to honor Mr. Peterson.

If you haven’t read about this yet, I encourage you to read over the past few blog posts to learn about Charles Peterson’s unexpected death in Hamburg on a routine business trip, how his wife Annie and son Con weren’t able to arrive quickly enough to be at the burial, how it is that his grave is unmarked and why we can now, through the legal and logistical work of fellow Pete Geek Jonathan Boldt, have a monument erected in the cemetery where Peterson is buried.

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN DONATE AN UNWANTED PIPE FOR THE MEMORIAL:

November 13-14th, Cedar Hill, Texas
SHOW INFO HERE

Do you have any Petes or other pipes you no longer smoke? Maybe pipe-smoking accessories you no longer use—tamps, working lighters, tobacco pouches, ephemera? Maybe a few tins of tobacco you’re not going to smoke?  Ken, Gary, Gigi and I will have a PPN table at the Texas Pipe Show this year. Send them to us. No need to clean them up. We’ll do that. Everything we make will go to the CP Memorial. I’ll post photos of the table, a catalog of what we sold by name of donor and the amounts made for each pipe or accessory here on the blog after the show.

Write to me at petegeek1896@gmail.com for the shipping address.

DRUMROLL, PLEASE . . . .
Available to order from today, the PPN Pipe of the Year!
$225 retail, $180 on SPC or €160 through SPEu.
ORDER HERE

Measurements & Other Details
Stamping Obverse Shank: PPN 2026 over x / 100
Stamping Reverse Shank: Forktail P “Peterson’s” over DUBLIN
Serialization: x through 100

Length: 5.25 in / 133 mm
Weight: .9 oz / 25 gr
Bowl Height: 1.31 in / 33.4 mm
Chamber Depth:1.02 in / 26 mm
Chamber Diameter: .63 in / 16.2 mm
Outside Diameter: 1.42 in / 36.1 mm
Stem Material: Natural Horn from Éire Era (1938-48)
Filter: None
Briar: Algerian from Éire – Early Republic
Shape: “596 Square Stem” Hexagonal Panel
Finish: Heritage

Glen Whelan, Managing Director at Peterson, has really outdone himself for the PPN Pete Geeks this year with an incredibly special shape, the 596 Square Stem Panel.

What’s so extraordinary about this year’s pipe is that its components date from the Éire and Early Republic eras, c. 1940-1955. The stummels are Algerian briar, Glen told me last Thursday and the stems, made of natural horn, date from “The Emergency”—aka WWII—when ebonite rod was scarce.

The 596 is about the largest of K&P’s panel shapes, shapes which had their origin in the Irish Free State era (1922–37), about a Dunhill Group 2. It was first seen in the ephemera shortly after The Emergency (September 2, 1939 – September 2, 1946) broke out in the very slender 1940 catalog. The image quality just barely hints at the panels:

It was seen again in the 1947 Distributor’s Catalog:

The 596 made its final bow in the 1955 Dublin & London catalog:

One reason for the shape, Glen told me, was that it allowed K&P to make use of small blocks of briar that would otherwise have gone to waste. The panels also worked to the company’s advantage during those difficult war-time years, since imperfections could be worked around in cutting a panel that wouldn’t have been possible with a smooth bowl.

The slender shank doesn’t leave enough material to accommodate a 9mm tenon, unfortunately. That being said, the tenon-mortise gap is less than 2mm. There will almost no turbulence.

Giacomo Penzo, Peterson’s Pipe Specialist, had to cut out space for the tenon, as you can see, which had to precisely line up to ensure the lines of the square shank moved uniformly from the briar to the horn and back to the button.

Collectors prize Algerian briar, as you recall, because it was grown in the poor, windswept Mediterranean soil. This caused the heath roots to grow slowly, creating a high density, tight grain in the burls. This type of briar reduces burnout risk in a smoking session where—as with this Dunhill Size 2 bowl—you may decide to smoke two or three bowls back to back. Algerian briar is also regarding as producing a uniquely clean and sweet taste, something to which I can attest, companioning a few Algerian-briar Petes.

Kapp & Peterson routinely sourced a large portion of their briar from Algeria until the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) put an end to commercial harvesting.

Glen chose the darker hue of the Heritage finish over the “black and white” (the brown stain seen for example on the System DeLuxe Dark) because he didn’t want lines from briar grain competing with the horizontal striations of the horn, and I think it’s a wise choice. It also gives the pipe an incredible vintage look reminiscent of many standard shapes made by Peterson’s Dublin and London factories during this period.

One final note about the PPN Pipe of the Year. Glen knew the 596 would be something that the Pete Geeks of PPN would be especially excited about because of its historicity.  While the blog has never made anything from the sale of these pipes (something people ask me from time to time), please understand that this is an act of goodwill on their part, as they must place the PPN commemorative on top of their regular work load and do this for a very small group of enthusiasts. And this year the whole team is going the extra mile for us given the tenon and horn stem work.

(BTW, if you’ve never smoked a horn stem, it’s much easier to clench than amber, even easier than acrylic. You can put some dental chatter into one if you bite hard (although this pipe is a featherweight), but the chatter comes out easily with MicroMesh. Horn stems have no taste–contrary to what some folks have argued. They’re easily polished up with mineral oil if they become dull, although I’ve only had to do that once or twice with mine.)

Intellectual Property
of
Kapp & Peterson
reproduced by their kind permission.

MANY THANKS
to
Glen Whelan