431. Matthew Webb’s Pilgrimage to the Peterson Factory
PSAs No ship notice from Zippo yet, but they're super-fast. I've send queries to K&P and SPC this week but no word from either, so we'll still assume the pipes will be ready to order next week or possibly early the week after. A Pilgrimage to the Peterson Factory by Matthew Webb My wife Denise and I spent the last year planning for an August cruise around Ireland. Our cruise ship had a small smoking area – occupied mostly by cigarette smokers with one or two cigar smokers. I was the only pipe smoker onboard and took the old leather pipe bag I purchased from Dan Pipe almost 30 years ago. It holds eight pipes and I took all Petersons, including last year’s PPN XL5BC and the PSOI ’03. Since the cruise started in Dublin, we decided to fly into Dublin a few days early to explore the city before boarding ship. In deciding what we wanted to see in Dublin, I sent an email to Peterson to see if it was possible to tour the Kapp & Peterson facility in Deansgrange. Thanks to Sinéad Carroll, the Manufacturing Operations Manager, a tour was arranged for our second day in Dublin. Landing in Dublin, we took a cab to our hotel and checked in. The hotel was about a mile from the Peterson shop on Nassau Street, so after relaxing for a bit we wandered up Grafton Street. The Peterson shop was near the intersection of Grafton and Nassau Streets. Stepping inside the shop, we were greeted by Darrell Hughes and Conor McAuley. I was surprised to see that while Peterson pipes were well represented in shop, there were few of the higher grade lines. Much of the inventory consisted of the non-System lines and Peterson seconds. The 2024 Peterson Pipe of the Year was released that day and I was determined to purchase a POY from the shop to commemorate our Ireland adventure. The only pipes available at the shop were a few in the Ebony and a larger number of rusticated version. I elected to purchase an Ebony. After spending more than an hour in the shop, we said our farewells and walked back to our hotel. Planning for the visit to the Kapp & Peterson facility, I had done an online search to see how we could get from our hotel to Deansgrange. The Dublin Bus line ran a scheduled route that we could catch a few blocks from the hotel that would drop us off across the street from the business park where Kapp & Peterson was located. The bus ride to Deansgrange was pleasant and we were dropped off with sufficient time before our scheduled arrival to have a hot drink at a small coffee shop. A few minutes before our time to show up, we walked through the business park to the Kapp & Peterson facility. A knock on the door and we were greeted by a gentleman apparently on a break. The walls…