434. SPECIAL BULLETIN: Sherlock Holmes Newgrange Spigot Drops Tomorrow, 12/17/2024
SPECIAL BULLETIN
A new Charles Peterson Collection (featuring the CP stamp) will be released tomorrow: the Sherlock Holmes Newgrange Spigot, featuring the Newgrange Spigot’s sterling silver spigots and Cumberland-patterned acrylic fishtail stems. Per Andy Wike, available shapes will include:
- Watson
- Mycroft
- Original
- Professor
- Milverton
- Baskerville
- Rathbone
- Lestrade
- Baker Street
- Deerstalker
Andy said “these will hit Smokingpipes.com on Tuesday around 1:00pm ET.” I don’t know if they will also be available at SPEu or not, but if so, the usual practice is to release them in tomorrow morning’s release, 10am Dublin time.
The Newgrange Spigot was first released in 2017 (see Post #66) in the pre-Laudisi “old style” batch of 12 shapes—that magic number in ancient Celtic myth. If you’re not familiar with this line, here’s a refresher of a few shapes from the line as it appeared in 2017:
As you can see by comparing these with the CP Collection SH Newgrange, the blasting style and ruby stain rims match the great acrylic cumberland swirl F/T (I’m thinking the acrylic in the studio SH photo is a big redder than it will appear in daylight, but I could be mistaken. The beaded spigot is also identical with the first-issue. The first-issues, however, differ from later Newgrange releases and the SH release in that only the first-issue (of all the spigot releases) copied the 1906 style of using an “F” (for Facing or Flat) mount with the beaded spigot:
The spigots reintroduced during the Late Republic era (to refresh your memory) featured either the F mount with a modern tapered spigot or a domed ferrule mount with the beaded spigot, which is how all spigots have rolled out since then. So it was a clever idea in 2017 to do a partial retro-“heritage” release using the F Mount and beaded spigot.
All that history to one side, these SH Newgrange Spigots certainly look a lot like Christmas, and I’m sure Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson would have enormously enjoyed smoking one during “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” their only Christmas adventure. I highly recommend that story in either the original written version by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or in the marvelous film adaptation for Granada Television featuring Jeremy Brett.
