285. SPECIAL BULLETIN: Nassau ‘Ulysses’ 9B Drops Friday, 6/9/22
THIS JUST IN: This Friday, JUNE 10th, 2022, at 10am Dublin time (that’s 4am CDT, 5am EDT), Smokingpipes.Eu will be releasing their third Nassau Street special edition, the Ulysses.
An extraordinary special release for System geeks, the Ulysses is a 9B (that’s right, tapered) Deluxe PSB in an edition of only 25 numbered pipes. Only a handful of 9Bs have been released a few years ago now, a couple in Italy and a couple at SPC. Before that, the B version was deleted by the mid-1950s and even then wasn’t seen in any numbers all the way back to the Patent and IFS eras.
Adam O’Neill, Marketing Manager and orchestrator of the Nassau project, writes, “While the actual centenary of James Joyce’s seminal novel was on the 2nd of February earlier this year — exactly 100 years after publication by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France — most celebrations are being held on the 16th of June, a day known to some as Bloomsday, and the day the meandering and circuitous events of Ulysses take place.
“Celebrating the centenary of this simultaneously lauded and condemned masterpiece, we’ve partnered again with Peterson to release the third installment of our exclusive Nassau line, this time in honour of Joyce’s accomplishment — the Ulysses [the second was last year’s Trinity Fox]. Taking the historic 9 Bent Billiard and pairing it to a wear-gapped tapered stem and broad silver mount— a combination known as the 9B — it’s finished in a PSB grade sandblast and a warm brown stain.
“When we were talking about what to do for the Ulysses the 9 shape seemed a natural choice. Ulysses was set (though not written) in 1904, so the timing is about right, give or take a decade. We also knew a PSB was the way to go, as it evokes the straw hats that Joyce wore and are quite popular at Bloomsday celebrations. To that end we considered a natural finish, but we’d already done that for the first Nassau release, so wanted something a little different. As for fittings, to me the wear-gapped mount and stem of the 9B was the only choice, as I felt it reflected Leopold Bloom’s character — a man apart, destined to be an outsider despite living and working beside his peers and neighbours his whole life.”
Keep a lid on it (the 1906 Hinge Cover 9B)!
Thanks to Adam O’Neill for
the advance intel, great banner & Ulysses 9B photos!