Nassau Street

Adam O’Neill, General Manager of Retail Operations for Laudisi in Ireland—aka Smokingpipes.Eu—wrote me earlier today with some exciting news for Pete Geeks, especially for those among us who adore the D20 / POY 2016 shape.

Adam: There’s a fox who lives in Trinity College, which is just across the street from our Nassau St shop. Sam is her name, given to her when she became something of a celebrity in the first lockdown, for wandering Grafton St. during the daylight hours. On occasion, perhaps when her five pups become too much to handle, Sam climbs a tree onto a low roof of the provost’s house to stretch in the sun and enjoy a moment’s peace. Though this happens to be in full view of the upper levels of our shop, and although a fox on a roof is a fairly novel concept, we generally try to give her some privacy because, well, it’s a feeling some of us know all too well.

Sam getting a little down time on a Trinity College roof top across from Peterson’s Nassau Street Shop

Combining the Chimney shape of the D20 with Peterson’s famed silverwork, the second of our exclusive Nassau line from Peterson is named in honour of Sam—the Trinity Fox. Individually numbered out of 23 pieces, it’s finished in a warm, dark red-brown sandblast paired to a gleaming silver spigot.

Sam’s a celebrity fox, an online hero
briefly promoted to the infosphere,
his bold image shared by a world of folks
anxious, like him, for sustenance. Can a fox
not do its solitary, unorthodox
research without some human interference?

— Derek Mahon,
“A Fox in Grafton St,” from Washing Up (2020)

Approximate Measurements & Other Details:

• Length: 154.68mm
• Weight: 38.80g
• Bowl Height: 57.45mm
• Chamber Depth: 48.27mm
• Chamber Diameter: 20.03mm
• Outside Diameter: 30.44mm

The D20 is one of my all-time favorite POY shapes, from 2016. Only 500 were made and I felt like the shape displayed a perfect understanding of classic Peterson design language, updated to the 21st century: a straight-sided stack, reminiscent of the 02B oom paul and 4 dutch billiard and a fat-pencil shank. Simple, elegant, striking. And in a stack!

The Trinity Fox looked at first like it had somewhat narrower chamber walls than my POY, but as the detail above shows, the pipe on the Trinity Fox is beveled just like the original, and I have never had a heat problem with the original. The two pipes, incidentally, are the same length.

DROP TIME: In the comments below–in case you don’t read those–Adam says the pipes will be available at the SPEu site and the Nassau Street shop at 10am GMT. I

(This is, incidentally, Adam O’Neill’s second Nassau Street special edition. The first was the 16-pipe release of a cumberland unfinished sandblast, back in 2020.)

MANY THANKS to Adam O’Neill:
Photography, pipe description and Sam notes
by Adam, courtesy Smokingpipes.eu

I have three Petes in need of good homes on eBay this week, all with Global Shipping available:

* a Patent Clay System (1891-1912), shape 8
* a DeLuxe 11A, late Éire
* a Dublin 120F (Flat), the shape Nigel Bruce smokes in some of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films.