Ken Sigel

“Crom and devils! Take the girl, but you can’t have my System GIANT!”

Mitra! A Peterson GIANT from the dawn of time. Who will rescue it from destruction by the evil-smelling, axe-wielding, No Smoking Big Uglies? Our favorite swash-buckling Cimmerian, that’s who!

Somewhere recently I remember reading Glen Whelan talking about the “fire hole” of a pipe. If you don’t know what that is, you’re probably not alone even as a Pete Geek. I hadn’t heard that term since I was at the factory in 2013, when Glen’s Dad Tony Whelan Jr. (factory manager at the time) used it in referring to what the non-Pete world calls a pipe’s tobacco chamber.  But fire hole is much, much better, don’t you think?

A couple of weeks ago Jonathan Gut CPG sent photos of a System so spectacular that words failed me.  While Gary Hamilton was able to respond with enthusiasm, but words failed me and I couldn’t answer. It was the size, of course.  I’d seen two of these pipes before, but nothing to compare with this one.  The absolute mass of birdseye dazzled my brain and the room began to swirl around.  Then darkness swallowed me up. I think I fainted.

When I recovered consciousness and stumbled up from the mat about a week later, I wrote Jonathan to ask him about it.

If I understood him, Jonathan’s adding a new wing on his house to accommodate it.  That’s because  a System GIANT can’t be housed just anywhere.  There are security measures that have to be taken.  Bars to be installed on windows.  A new identity to be assumed. And of course, there are space considerations.

And I said “System GIANT”–that’s because  we need to add new vocabulary to the Pete Speak Lexicon.

Here’s my first-draft definition:

 System GIANT: What others call a magnum, Pete Geeks call either a “Giant” (for non-System pipes) or a “System GIANT.” The System Giant is substantially larger than the “O” (Oversize) shapes of the 1896 and 1906 catalogs.  Examples have been documented in the Patent, IFS, and Republic eras.

There are three reasons System GIANT is a better term than magnum to describe this largest-of-the-large Petes:

First, like I’ve already said, it’s a word K&P made their own when they named the straight and bent billiards “Giants” in the ephemera from 1976.  These two shapes were made earlier, but this was the first time they were named.

The Connemara Giant by Irish sculptor Mark Joyce

Second, I am convinced K&P called those two pipes GIANTS instead of magnums because Ireland has a rich heritage of legends and myths containing giants: the Fomorians, Ireland’s first giants and associated with Giant’s Causeway, including Finn McCool and Gráinne his betrothed, but there’s also Dryantore and many, many more, as I. E. Kneverday’s blog and books have noted.

Third, magnum is Latin for “great.”  Latin is great for things like oversize bottles of wine and Dirty Harry’s gun, but for the largest of all Irish Petersons, it seems to me we need something from Ireland, not France (or California) or Hollywood.  We could go for Gaelic, of course, and use Fathach, Arracht, Fomhórach or a few others, but why not use what Peterson has used alreadys—Giant?

You undoubtedly recall the non-System Giant from Post #244, which has been documented as a straight and bent billiard shape from the Early Republic and Late Republic eras.

Lance Dahl CPG is one of the three greatest Pete collectors in the world today. In the cassette above, the top four pipes are his finest classic K&P Giants, followed a giantish straight-grain P-Lip dublin (left) and a Dunmore-era beaded Plato (right).

Jonathan’s System GIANT alongside a 314

What makes Jonathan’s Patent a System GIANT is not so much its length—as there are many O1, O2 and even a few O3s around with stems this long—but the bowl’s size.  At four inches tall, it’s a good 1¼” taller than the O1 dutch and if memory serves, 1 ½” taller than the O2.

Measurements of Jonathan’s System GIANT

Length: 14.5 in
Weight: 11 oz
Bowl Height: 4 in
Chamber Depth: 3.5 in
Chamber Diameter: 1 1/8 in
Outside Diameter: 3 in

While Jonathan’s pipe is hallmarked “M” for 1907, we know the shape didn’t end in the Patent era.  Ken Sigel has one from the Irish Free State Era:

You can see the difference in scale between a System GIANT and the O1 that Charles Peterson loved and smoked in this photo from Ken:

I asked Ken for his thoughts on smoking one of the System GIANTS. He replied:

“First and foremost, smoking a bowl in this guy is a commitment of time. For me that is a good thing. It is a commitment to sitting back, being quiet and letting a good smoke completely absorb me. This is not something to do between chores or before something else with a defined starting time. The pipe’s sheer size makes holding a book all but impossible, and obviously so is moving around.

“Then what is left? Sitting in my rocking chair, looking out over the woods, and doing what I call ‘philosophical work’ –working on my personal philosophy — an ongoing process that has been underway for years and still requires many more hours of effort. . My less-enlightened family members refer to this as ‘letting the mind wander while staring off into space.’ They site brief and not infrequent dozing as an example of the vacuous nature of the  endeavor. What do they know? Given the inherent intensity of the work, a wee bit of 15 year Redbreast can be a useful ‘lubricant.’

“On the technical side of things, given the large diameter of the bowl, things can get smokey. I choose a tobacco whose room note suites me. Today it was Plum Pudding Reserve. I have to take loading the pipe seriously to get a nice, even, continuous burn. However once this is done and the bowl is lit, the chimney effect of the long stem makes smoking almost effortless. I did learn that the charring light has to be pretty thorough, as there is an awful lot of area of tobacco to engage.

“One last comment–use either long wooden matches, a Cricket or similar lighter that will reach down into the bowl. A typical pipe lighter just will not get heat down in the bowl as your blend burns down.”

Finally, back in 2017 there was an eBay auction for a System GIANT with the “Special” shank stamp that was touted as being a movie prop used in an Alfred Hitchcock film:

If you’re a cineaste or just a Hitchcock fan and can identify which film or TV show this is from, do respond in the comments below to receive your official No Prize Merit Badge.  I watched all the Hitchcock sound films and some of the silents during the COVID lockdown, and don’t remember seeing it.  I’m wondering if there wasn’t a film in a tobacconist’s shop, where it would have been used as a display in the window or behind the counter.  Anyway, on eBay this pipe went for the outrageous price of $400. How things have changed. Sigh.

You can see the bowl shape here is the same as Jonathan and Ken’s pipes. Which leads me to ask how many non-catalog shapes actually were “standard” in the sense of being made routinely made, if only in very small numbers, like the “11” Pickax and the “11” Stack Dublin, and many of the 700 group shapes. These, I think, were not one-offs, but shapes in what we can call the Shadow Catalog—that is, shapes made for many years, but in really small numbers and never documented in K&P’s ephemera.

With thanks to Jonathan Gut, Ken Sigel, & Lance Dahl.
You can meet these three stalwart Pete Geeks and see
Jonathan’s amazing System GIANT at the Chicago Pipe Show this year.

Sometimes you have to fight for a little time to smoke your Pete in peace & quiet.