Peterson Accessories

We like to think that we know a great deal about the past here in the second decade of the 21st century, but the more I read history, historical novels and study pipes & tobaccos, the more I’m convinced that we have very little visual understanding of the quotidian realities of bygone days. Take almost anything from the past—the tenements and mansions of Dickensian London, the British naval vessels of Patrick O’Brien’s “Aubreyiad” (the Aubrey-Maturin novels), our own home towns 50, 80 or 100 years ago, or the actual pipes, tobaccos and related ephemera that might be found in any of them—and it’s difficult to conjure any kind of real sensory impression of what they were like. Even in more recent history, we know so little about what it might have been like to buy, say, a Peterson pipe 70 years ago, either here in the US or in Europe or abroad. I think that’s why, when we started writing the Peterson book, I became fascinated by the wealth of Peterson pipe boxes, especially when I would see what looked to be a NOS pipe with its box, brochure, sock, guarantee and maybe even Gratis Pipe Tool. I knew that the boxes each had a story to tell, prompting to me create the montage of boxes on p. 131, one of my favorite images in the book.* I know there are some dedicated collectors of Dunhill, Comoys, Barling and other great production pipes of the past who sometimes read this blog—if you’re one of them, can you tell us whether these or other companies had the same profusion of pipe boxes through the 20th century? There were a number of fascinating Peterson boxes that I did not have at the time I created that montage for the book, including the following one that’s seen in period photographs of the factory’s shipping department and dates from late 1940s and early 1950s. It was a struggle not to bid for it, as it was part of a nearly-complete Standard System 307 set on eBay, which went for $143, just a little more than a new Premier System: But knowing I wouldn’t smoke the 307 and was only buying it for the box, I resisted (and had a bit of remorse in doing so!). There are four early boxes that I want to share, all made in Dublin by P. O’Reilly, who did business in Dublin at 32 & 33 Poolbeg St. and made cardboard boxes, as this ad from the September 13, 1902 issue of All Ireland Review indicates, for millinery, mantles, costumes, soaps, cigarettes and tobacco: Today it's about a 15 minute walk from the Poolbeg address to the St. Stephen's Green factory site (Cuffe Lane being the back entrance where employees entered): It’s a pleasant coincidence that Kapp & Peterson took an ad out on the same page of the All Ireland Review, and it turns out that in addition to doing business with P. O’Reilly, Alfred H. Kapp and…