Irish Free State bulldogs

Banner: Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, smoking a Peterson bulldog in the Sherlock Holmes film Dressed to Kill (1946) Rev. 9am, 3/24. Irish Bulldogges! I had no idea they were so popular among the Pete Geeks, really I didn’t.  This morning we’ll continue on with our survey of the history of this shape in the K&P catalog, moving from the final years of the Patent era on through the Irish Free State and Éire periods, stopping at the 1947 Distributor’s Catalog which appeared just before the Republic was created. Petey, the Pit Bull Terrier of Our Gang Renown in the IFS and Éire Eras Along the way I’ll be inserting bulldogs Pete Geeks have sent that are relevant to the IFS or Éire eras. Before we get started, three things to help us along our way: Hallmarks. First is simply to remind everyone—especially those trying to date their pipes—that the surest guide to dating a pipe’s manufacture are its stamps and hallmarks—and you can find out a great deal about those by clicking the HALLMARKS page tab in the black bar at the top of the screen. Plus One.  Second, catalogs and ephemera are also crucial in dating a pipe, especially its appearance in a line. That’s where the big Peterson book can come to the Pete Geek’s aid with its orange-tabbed “Collector’s Reference” section. As important as this method is for dating, we have to remind ourselves that printed ephemera always appears after a pipe is in production and so it can only give us approximate or what I think of as “+1” dates, meaning that the pipe or new line in question probably appeared a year before the catalog. The Good Neighbor.  Finally, to really be part of Pete Geekdom, it’s important to be a good neighbor.  I believe there is still vital information about Peterson shapes, lines and series waiting to be recovered by the Peterson community as a whole.  As you’ll see in what follows, this matters more than you think. 1939 Peterson-Rogers Catalog petersonpipenotes Todd Becker (of eBay's Deadmanspipes), for example, won the super-rare 1939 Rogers Imports Ltd. Peterson catalog a few years back and sent it to me to scan and circulate a PDF.  This act of fellowship has given every Peterson collector considerable knowledge on the end of the Éire era, on what the London and Dublin factories offered in lines and shape numbers in that critical moment just before the Pipeocalypse of World War II descended. The Last of the Patent Era Bulldogs One of the things that makes shape numbers so difficult to ascertain after the big 1906 catalog is that shape numbers weren’t stamped on the bowls. It wasn’t until sometime in the early Éire era that this began; previously, bowl numbers were penciled on the inside of the chamber, as we documented in the big Peterson book. Another difficulty is that the shape numbering system changed several times in the K&P ephemera, so many times that it’s difficult to…