203. “No. 9, No. 9, No. 9”: The Revolution of Peterson’s Bowl Shape 9 (and A Second Look at the POY 2020)
John Lennon was born on the 9th of October, 1940, just a little over eighty years ago this month. If you’re of a certain age, then “Revolution 9” from the Beatles’ White Album means something to you. If you’re not, then all I can say is that while I can’t confirm Lennon smoked a Peterson System 9 there’s no reason not to imagine he might have in an alternate universe.* When Brian sent me an Early Republic XL307 recently, it occurred to me as I compared it against the 9BC and the new POY 2020 that there’s been a fascinating revolution of bowl shape 9 in K&P's long history. Not an evolution in the connoted sense of progressive change and not a revolution in the political sense or connotation of drastic change, but a revolution in the etymological sense of rolling back. I believe the POY 2020 and the original 9BC bowl shapes have much more in common with the 1891 Patent 9 bowl than either has with the 9 bowl of the past 60 to 70 years. The original bowl (and pipe) shape 9 is certainly different from the currently made 9S, 307 and XL90 pipe shapes, as a glance between these images reveals: The 1891 Patent 9S A 2020 Natural 9S Even making allowance for the fact that this photo of the 2020 9S pipe (as with all the stock photos at SPC) isn’t a true "flank" shot but a slant shot which pushes the bowl slightly closer to the viewer and the mouthpiece back a bit, the bowls are still visually quite different. The 2020 has little upper cheeking, which means no real curve inward toward the crown. But if you look closely, you’ll see both bowls have the thick shanks necessary to enclose the System reservoir. It is, however, closer to one of its forbears than you might suppose. The 1906 Patent 9S There was no change between the 1891 and 1906 shape 9, at least from the catalog illustrations we have of it. The virtue of the 1906 illustration is that it was made not from an artist's rendering but by what I conjecture was offset lithography (and please, artists, correct me here), taking photographs and rendering them suitable to the printing press. Was it intaglio? All I know is that there is a world of difference between the two catalogs, and one feels as if one is looking at photographs of actual pipes in the 1906 catalog. The Patent 9 as seen in the McClurg catalog for 1909-10 In the Chicago mail-order McClurg catalog for 1909-1910 there's a really fine illustration of shape 9 that lets you see the cheeking of the bowl. The prominent "3" in a circle also provides a visual demonstration of how the "300" System numbering would develop. At this point, McClurg (at least) was using "3" for Grade 3 and "9" for bowl shape 9. Things would be shuffled around a bit before the 300 chart settled down in…