Peterson 400 shape group

The 400-shape group has come to the forefront with Peterson's recent reboot of the 406 “Large Prince” (seen above). It’s an interesting and usually overlooked group, comprised of straight shapes influenced by the classic English chart. Insofar as the catalogs are concerned (which are never, of course, identical with actual production dates), the shape group begins quite understandably shortly after Peterson opened its London factory in the Bradley Buildings in 1937—England at the time being one of Peterson’s “Big Three” markets (the other two being the US and Germany). As a group, the shapes reflect the smoking styles of the mid-twentieth century—the 1940s, 50s and 60s—the decades that produced most of them. That is, they are smaller pipes than most pipemen (and women) use today and they’re lighter, designed for the comfort of constant clenching in an office or factory environment where both hands were needed, and for the shorter, probably more frequent smokes that the interruptions of the workday entails. While I’ve been able to document 21 shapes, probably no more than 8 to 10 were ever offered at one time, and for most decades considerably less. Once in a while Peterson, being the counter-cultural wags they are, will subvert the English aesthetic by giving a shape a “bit of the Irish,” adding what they call an “S/B” or “Semi-Bent” mouthpiece—a piece of Peterson lore that even Peterson has forgotten!   400 – Billiard. The 400 is about as English as a billiard can get, although perhaps a little beefier than we’re accustomed to think of today. It is seen only in the 1937 catalog. The photograph below isof an over-reamed estate (with a replacement stem), made quite fittingly at the London factory.   400 w/Replacement Stem Measurements: Length: 5.30 in./134.62 mm. Weight: 0.90 oz./25.51 g. Bowl Height: 1.57 in./39.88 mm. Chamber Depth: 1.32 in./33.53 mm. Chamber Diameter: 0.68 in./17.27 mm. Outside Diameter: 1.26 in./32.00 mm.   The next four shapes, the 405, 406, 407 and 408, are siblings. The Peterson ephemera names the 406 a “Large Prince” in the 1947 shape chart, and the 407 a “Prince.” Contemporary retailers seem at a loss to find a name for the 408, with Ted Swearingen at Smokingpipes going on record to say he’s heard it described “both as a classic English Apple and English Author,” preferring himself to regard it as a hybrid. Ever the Irish iconoclast, I’ll stick with Peterson’s nomenclature: if it so obviously derives from the 406 and 407 Princes and it’s on Irish steroids, then it seems to me that it’s obviously either a “Chubby Prince” or, if you want to keep it manly, an “Irish Prince.”   405s – Prince. The 405s was first announced in the 1979 update to the 1975 catalog and released in the various Classic Range lines, documented in the Kildare, Kildare Patch and Sterling. It was extremely short-lived, however, and is not found in any subsequent Peterson catalogs. Whether it was slightly larger or smaller than the 406 and 407…