Pocket Pipes

One unannounced new line for 2018 is the Natural Outdoor Series, a serious upgrade of the Outdoor Series released around 2011. The line features Peterson’s natural finish high-grade bowls, many with flame-grain, a wide double-beaded sterling band, hand-stamping on the briar with the fork-tail P logo and a vulcanite mouthpiece. While sharing photos of the new line (which is in limited release at a few e-tailers here and across the pond), I thought readers might also be interested in a little of the history behind them. 1906: “Pal” AB System 2018 Natural Outdoor, Calabash: Peterson’s Smallest Current Production Pipe As the world’s longest continuously operating maker of briar pipes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that Peterson has had a long interest in pocket pipes. While there are none found in the 1896 catalog, leafing through the 1906 catalog there are over a dozen shapes that today we’d classify as nose-warmers: oval bowls (sometimes known as “opera pipes”), extra small Patent Systems, straight Systems, bulldogs, and named pipes like the “Pat,” “Jap,” and “R.I.C.” * 1947: “SPORTS” Line (1983 catalog) Production of small shapes doubtless continued after the Patent era through the Irish Free State and into the Eire era, but the next concrete evidence we have comes with the “SPORTS” line of pipes released in the late 1940s—the quotation marks and all-capital letters being part of the original line’s name. The Identification Guide chapter of The Peterson Pipe identifies 11 shapes that were made through the years in this line—all of them from full-sized bowls, but not all usually in production at any one time. One of my only attempts to be a pipe collector (rather than “companioner”) was to gather all eleven "SPORTS,” which I did. My problem then (and now) was that all but the 1947 Shape 5 bulldog had tiny P-Lip mouthpieces that I couldn’t clinch. How someone managed to do so on a golf course or astride his polo horse I have no idea. Maybe there was an optional headset attachment. The line continued in small numbers, on and off, through the end of the twentieth century, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Peterson still makes them on demand. 2011: Outdoor (Shape 124) In 2011, the company unfurled an updated version of the pocket pipe, utilizing some fantastic shapes from their catalog: the under-utilized and seldom seen 124 canted dublin (as Irish a shape as you’ll ever see), the danish-bent dublin D6, a bent billiard 65 with marvelous upswept mouthpiece, and a very Barry Fitzgeraldesque apple, the 86. These resurface from time to time and are currently available (for example) at Smokingpipes. 2014: Outdoor Sportsman In 2014, Peterson launched their first-ever line of army-mount pocket pipes with the Outdoor Sportsman line. I say that because the 1906 army-mount pockets were all “Extra Small” P.P.P.s—Peterson Patent Pipes, while the other pockets were navy-mounts. I tried smoking an 01 Outdoor Sportsman for a while, and it wasn’t the smoke that was the problem, but simply how close…