James Joyce

I’m convinced the glory of the Dublin era (1991-2018) will always be in the boxed sets that began in 1995 and ended in 2013. If we count the Pipe of the Year and a few strays, over sixty new shapes came out of those collections, forming the great collector's legacy of the era: the B shapes.  The box collections were not only difficult to source in those years when the hobby was transitioning to the internet, but even when found they were far above my pay grade, which doubtless lent them some of their mystique. While I could sometimes spring for a POY, it was largely thanks to the trickle-down into the “killer B” lines that most Pete Geeks were able to enjoy them. It was such fun to watch and see where a B shape might surface—in the year’s SPD release, Christmas commemorative or in one of the numerous Italian lines for Lubinski. Of all the boxed sets, my three favorites have always been the original Antique Collection (1995)the Great Explorers (2002) and the Writers (2010) quartets. Like the two others, the Writers Collection is a tightly-designed group of shapes that complement each other extremely well, playing visually like a great string quartet. The WC came in an era when packaging was still important, so the display box was a delight and nicely done. It is modest in proportions, but with the after-market chamfering of the tenons all four make wonderful sipping pipes. The pipes were available in smooth terracotta, smooth ebony, black sandblast and pineapple rustic. The terracotta smooth utilized the aluminum embedded P, the other three reverting to a hot foil silver P. The hotfoil P finishes: ebony, rustic & blast The backstory idea for the Writers Quartet is a good one: take four of the greatest Irish writers of all time and devote a pipe to each. I couldn’t agree more with placing James Joyce and William Butler Yeats in the quartet. I suppose from a purely historical point of view I can go along with Oscar Wilde as well. But George Bernard Shaw? I can think of other Irish writers that rate much higher in the canon. While K&P has devoted a pipe (indirectly) to Bram Stoker with the Dracula, there’s some incredible authors that remain untapped: Maeve Binchy, John Banville and Roddy Doyle to name three. But there’s two absolutely inexcusable omissions: Samuel Beckett and C. S. Lewis. And speaking of Lewis, given his friend Tolkien’s deep love of Ireland, where is the Tolkien – Lewis set we’ve all been wanting (even though you didn’t know you wanted it until I wrote it just now). I hope we haven’t seen the last of such collections, but it’s been almost a decade and we’re into the fourth year of the Laudisi era, so my hopes are beginning to fade.   One of the last of the cardboard strutcards JOYCE / B45 "Jests, jokes, jigs and jorums for the Wake lent from the properties of the…