Author: Mark Irwin

  THE PETERSON TINTACKER See end of post for ordering information.   Sébastien Canévet is one of the most delightful Pete Geeks I’ve ever met virtually. In person, I suspect he’s even funnier than he is on his YouTube law show, You Have the Right, which I highly recommend not only because it has great English sub-titles (!), but because you get a chance to meet his cat Triccotine, glimpse his incredible pipe collection, see him in his Lego avatar, and even learn a bit about what’s going on in the French law news. A Real Bomb Threat As you might suspect, Sébastien is a law professor. In addition to teaching at the University of Poitiers, he’s the founder of the Internet Rights Forum, a vintage car enthusiast, and a Sherlockian who’s published a deuterocanonical story, “The Case of the Terrible Assassin” (1995), which, sadly, seems not to be available in translation. As I know there are several bilingual Pete Geeks among us, anyone who translates this (with Sébastien's permission) will earn our eternal gratitude and even a PPN Merit Badge! You may recall Sébastien's fascinating study on “Kapp & Peterson’s Early French-Made Figural Briars,” back in PPN #217, which I highly recommend to everyone interested in Patent Petes.  What brings him to us this Sunday morning, however, is something truly epic in the history of Peterson Pipe Notes: his discovery and acquisition of an Irish Free State era tin Peterson sign and desire to see it reproduced for the benefit of Pete Geeks across the globe. “How,” you might ask, “did he ever unearth such a treasure?”  Well, I asked him to explain, which he did: Sébastien:  I'm a light smoker but an avid collector of pipes. (Quite frankly, I’m a collector of collections.) My first pipe was a humble clay from the 19th-century French factory Gambier. I was 14 or 15 years old when I bought it with my pocket money: five French francs (about a dollar). I still own it — it was the starting point of my collection. For some unknown reason, I’ve always been attracted to the British Isles, and I visit them as often as I can. I found my first Peterson — a shabby 314 — at a flea market in London, perhaps Portobello, when I was 18. It was a real revelation : my late father could keep his pipe in his mouth for an hour. I can’t do that — except with the holy System. Thank you so much, Mister Peterson. It didn’t take long before I bought another System. You can guess the rest. Today, I own a large collection of pipes — perhaps 300 — of which 100 are Petersons. Being a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, I was of course very interested when the Sherlock Holmes collection was launched in the eighties. I offered one SH Original to my father. By chance, it was the rare 1990 System version. Now I own the entire collection of 14 different pipes,…