history of dublin pipe shape

In the past few years I have become enamored with the Irish equivalent of the English billiard—the straight dublin. I have heard some folk cavil against it for one of the very reasons I love it: its v-shaped chamber, which creates a more concentrated flavor as the bowl is smoked to the bottom. In my experience, this type of chamber requires the least number of relights of any bowl geometry and for that reason also trumps the billiard. That it is linked by name with Dublin (and so with Irish smoke) is yet another reason for my affection. Seriously, can you think of any other pipe shapes named for a city? (No, Bull Moose, Minnesota doesn't count.) The dublin shape name seems to appear with every other straight shape at the dawn of briar history in the last decades of the 19th century. The name suggests its origins, and you might think it has something to do with the dudeen or clay pipe of Dublin. No, and yes. No: dudeen, also spelled dudheen, doodeen, and doodheen, is from the Irish Gaelic dūidīn, and is the diminutive of dūd, “pipe,” so that a dudeen is “a short tobacco pipe made of clay,” according to the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. And “Dublin,” of course, is from the Irish dubhlinn (dubh = black and linn = pool). The dublin shape is common among clays, but not specific to the town of Dublin. Yes: Somehow, quite early in the history of briar pipes, the shape name came to be associated with the town bearing its name.It doesn't really matter, I suppose, whether it was a name used in an early pipe catalog or a name like the "dutch" billiard coined by servicemen. And if any pipe maker might be said to have proprietary rights to the shape, I'd say it would have to be an Irish maker, wouldn't you? The Peterson book, incidentally, has some history about the Dublin clay pipe industry in the late 19th century as well as K&P’s own clay System pipes. (Courtesy Bill Burney) In the Fall 1998 issue of PipeSMOKE, Jacques Cole, one of the only writers to discuss shape names, writes: The Dublin is probably the oldest briar pipe shape - like a cone, either slight or extreme - owing its origin directly to clay pipes. The reason for the name is quite obscure and no satisfactory explanation has been found. A variant of the Dublin is the obtuse-angled Zulu (sometimes called Yachtsman or Woodstock) and is made with either a round or an oval shank. A variation with an upright bowl and extreme cone is called a Bell Dublin.* It's significant, I think, that Peterson's very first catalog contained the shape, if not the name. Remember that over the years, Peterson has only rarely added names to their shape numbers, although a few shapes have only had names. It's also important to understand that Peterson has only attempted a comprehensive catalog of all the shapes…