Patent System history

It’s that time again for Pete Geeks from all over the globe to show off their favorite Systems. This year we celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Patent System Pipe and I’d like you to be part of System Day festivities if at all possible, which will be held just  TWO Sundays from today, September 3rd. Whether entering as a first-timer anxious for the coveted “Certified Pete Geek” PDF certificate or an old-time PG wanting to add yet another merit badge the existing one, I hope you’ll take up the challenge.  Directions are found at the end of this post and it would be amazing to get 125 entries from every part of the globe. Oh, and did I mention that the 2023 PPN Commemorative pipe will ALSO be revealed on September 3rd? Double Shot: A straight-grain 12.5 Deluxe at SPC just now Did I mention System Day 2023 marks the 125th anniversary of Charles Peterson’s Patent System Pipe? This is surely some kind of record in the history of the briar pipe. The “125” number got me thinking that it’s also a most propitious time to recall Aesop’s moral that “good things come in small packages”—as, for example, in shape 12.5, one of the smallest of the System pipes.*   THE 125th ANNIVERSARY & THE PATENT ORIGIN STORY I know most everyone who thinks of himself as a Pete Geek probably has a copy of the Peterson book—if not everyone has read every single page of yet it. (Did you know, for example, there’s an Identification Guide with colored edge pages for easy access? Or a cross-reference chart of System-to-Classic Range shapes?)  For everyone who may not quite have the facts at their fingertips, the Patent origin story goes something like this: As a young man in a part of Russia that would later become Latvia, Charles Peterson apprenticed to become a “wood turner,” an all-purpose years-long journeyman program from which he would be certified and then could go on to work in a variety of capacities—as a cabinet maker, musical instrument maker, pipe maker or any other type of work requiring a high degree of skill in wood-working. As the country of his birth was at that time under German political and cultural control, Charles knew German from school and spoke the Latvian dialect of Russian at home, being equally conversant in either language. Through connections after graduation, he worked first in Riga (which would be the capitol of Latvia and has always been the center of the amber trade in Europe) and then after a bit I believe he wound up in London’s Soho district working for George and Frederick Kapp, immigrants from Germany. From them he learned meerschaum as well as briar pipe making, which latter was in its first decades and making great inroads in the trade. The brothers Kapp at first worked together under one roof, then split up, Frederick moving a few blocks away and concentrating on retail trade (although he, too, carve…