System Pipes

  By Jason Canady CPG Lately, I’ve been on a bone chimney collecting kick. When I first heard Peterson made their chimneys out of bone, I had the same reaction my wife did when she found out the stinger in the pipe I was holding was made of actual bone. “A bone? A real bone? An actual bone from an animal?” Yep. Honestly, I’m just as curious—and morbidly fascinated—as she is. I mean, this part of the pipe was once a living thing. It came from a breathing animal. It was a collection of cells and minerals, once covered in tissue and blood. It played an essential role in the animal’s life—something it couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to, live without. And now, that very bone is part of my smoking pipe, making it better. There’s something so primal, almost pagan, about it. It’s like a bone through the nose or woven into the braids of a warrior. It’s ancient. It belongs to a time of game stew eaten straight from the pot hanging over the hearth. It speaks of a bygone world where man not only hunted his meal but carved up its remains for pleasure. Now? We’re aluminum. Shiny and new. Streamlined. Machine-turned sleek. But somewhere in that shimmer, maybe we’ve lost a little of the soul. My first pipe with a bone chimney was a De Luxe 1934 9B billiard stamped “0” with a B stem that I scored off eBay. It was in near-new condition. Imagine someone buying a high-end Peterson pipe in Dublin during a time of major political and economic upheaval—the rise of Fianna Fáil, the Great Depression, the 1933 anti-communist riots—and then just… sticking it in a drawer. Nearly a hundred years ago, Dublin was grappling with poverty, overcrowding, and housing shortages. This pipe? It’s a time capsule. Now it’s in my hand, mint condition. When it arrived, I held it up, staring at the fresh-looking bone chimney protruding from the stem—completely fascinated. A real bone… from an animal. Lately, I’ve picked up two more bone-chimney treasures. One of them I found on Etsy, of all places. I scroll through thousands of pipes daily, but this one clamped onto my attention like a bulldog and refused to let go. It was a vintage smooth Peterson De Luxe 12.5 (317 System) with a hand-cut stem. How did I know? It was stamped “hand cut”—and I knew that meant something special. The photos revealed it still had its chimney, and yes—it was bone. I could even see the tiny pores in the reddish, cone-shaped cylinder. The grain was exquisite—rich brown, with just a hint of red when caught at the right angle. It was classic vintage Peterson; the kind of finish they’ve tried to revive with their Heritage and Dark Smooth stains. But this wasn’t a recreation—this was the real deal. After flipping through Irwin’s Peterson Pipe book like a wizard hunting for a specific spell, I landed on a paragraph quoting Joe Kenny that said…