Peterson Antique Collection

Well here it is April 1st again, and as the 2017 new lines are being packed up for their journey across the pond, it's time to light up Peterson’s switchboards with calls about the unexpected Shamrock Antique Collection. Having taken inspiration for the 2017 Pipe of the Year from the 1906 “Jap,” Peterson jumps forty years forward to an era many aficionados love, one rich with vintage shapes, many that haven’t been in production for decades. “The idea,” says a company representative, “grew out of a chance conversation over a pint with Finn McCool.” McCool, a lecturer in religion & culture at Queen's University, Belfast, claims his great-grandfather (a professor at Trinity College, Dublin) not only knew Heinrich Kapp (!), but agreed to let his portrait be used for the company’s “Thinking Man” logo in exchange for a lifetime supply of Peterson Smoking Mixture and a new De Luxe System 4 every three years. “I was telling McCool about how difficult it is to come up with ideas for new collections, and McCool began talking about Bourgeault’s work on the Christian Trinity and the ‘law of three,’*  which totally went over my head until he connected it with the shamrock. I confess I didn't follow much of what he said after that, because I just kept thinking: why not take Peterson’s historical association with the shamrock and see what we could come up with?” That turned out to be a lot. The shamrock first appeared in Peterson's 1896 catalog as an option on a carved bowl. In the 1906 catalog, the shamrock was stamped on an intermediate grade of briar between 1st and 2nd quality (seen above). But most pipe-smokers in the U.S. associate it with the Rogers Imports Ltd. Shamrock line of Peterson pipes, common in the 1940s and 50s and steady sellers on eBay. These featured a soldered nickel band with a shamrock appearing above or below the “faux-marks” of harp, wolf hound, and round tower. (Peterson concurrently issued its own unmounted Shamrock line at the same time, usually found outside the U.S., with the S stamp on the mouthpiece.) The bowl shapes, of course, are the thing, and Peterson has chosen well. As those of you know who downloaded or looked at the K&P 1940 catalog (available elsewhere on the blog), the World War II era, known as “the Emergency” in Ireland, posed a number of difficulties for such a small company that depended almost entirely for its existence on exports. By 1943, U.S. smokers could no longer even buy Peterson pipes. But just before that temporary darkness fell, Peterson in association with Rogers Imports created two unique shapes: the "Dublin Bullog," a diamond-shank Dublin, and a marvelous author, an unbeaded fishtail XL-version of the 999 John Bull. As no documented examples of either pipe has surfaced for the Peterson book, I wonder how many were actually made, or if these shapes even reached the U.S. For their third shape, Peterson chose one that did make to the…