Peterson Collectors

While revisiting places in Dublin from her college days, my wife Sarah Kelly and I came upon the Peterson Store. Once inside, odd pieces and parts came together … my college professor father’s office with pipes and tobacco lying around (and me sneaking in to draw on unlit pipes)… a coming-of-age hitchhiking trip through Ireland… a love of working with wood...my March 17 birthday (St. Patrick’s Day) also figuring in somewhere.. . Out the shop I went with a beautiful smooth Watson, a silver Peterson lighter, and a few ounces of Peterson Deluxe. Sarah spent a good part of the rest of our visit waiting for me trying to either light the darn thing or keep it lit. Eventually I could light up a bowl and not burn my tongue too badly. That’s all it took. I was hooked. Back home in Connecticut I enjoyed the Watson, experimented with tobacco and started to buy more pipes. The Savinellis, the Vauens, and Butz-Choquins all came and went. The feel, the look, the history and of course the great System smoke made me a Peterson devotee. As the collection grew, it became time for pipe racks. Designing and making them added a whole new dimension to it all. The Watson, Far Right (Pipe Rack by Ken) If I could make turn scrap cherry from the shop into a pipe rack, I ought to be able to take a tired estate pipe and end up with a nicely refurbished estate Peterson. A Rogers Import Shamrock 493 Lo and behold, with a little help from my friends, those first efforts weren’t all that bad! Let me digress. A most satisfying aspect of this whole process was and continues to be making friends with fellow pipemen and women. Early on in this journey I made the acquaintance of Steve Laug (Reborn Pipes). I called him to ask a few simple refurbishing questions. I admit to being astonished when Steve matter-of-factly said it would be easier to explain in a Zoom meeting, and so my learning from Steve began. He is a wonderful mentor. Now, over a hundred refurbished pipes sold as well as those I have kept in my collection. l continue to learn from Steve and count him as a friend. Our calls have become part pipe talk, part life talk. With the Peterson passion came a need for more understanding of Peterson history and all the various pipes. At the time Mark Irwin’s book was out of print in the US. I finally found a new copy from a seller in Italy. Mark was another pipeman generous with his knowledge. I was thrilled when a pipe rack of mine made it into the PPN blog last Christmas. Mark’s frightfully encyclopedic knowledge of Peterson pipes only fueled my Peterson passion. Mark is a fine pipe craftsman in his own right and we began talking pipe refurbishing. Those discussions led to discussions of pipe collecting in general. With the number of Petersons approaching 100, I…