Peterson apple shape

Rev. 12/30/2023 I love a good apple. That is, a good Malus domestica. Not that it’s easy to find them in most grocery stores. But as a pipe shape? Not really. I’ve just never paid much attention to it, maybe because it’s so omnipresent in the Danish-influenced shape charts of so many contemporary artisans. I know a few high-dollar collectors who only care about artisan apples, whether bent or straight, and to my untrained and unsophisticated eye they all look more or less alike. An apple is an apple is an apple, even if it’s an expensive one, right? But what about Irish apples? And you know I’m not talking about the Ballyfatten, Bloody Butcher, Green Chisel or Peach Melba (all fine Irish heritage fruits) but Kapp & Peterson apples. That’s a different story. It's also one that, at least for Pete Geeks, may be a fruit worth their tasting. 1920 K&P’s first documented Apple shape appeared at the tail end of the Patent Era in the c. 1920 Temporary Illustrated Pipe List as the pudgy 1012. It’s already fully-formed as far as the design language of the company is concerned: a plump, full-cheeked bowl with rounded crown and a shank which slopes away from the bowl to the mouthpiece. The muscularity of the shank gives it that distinguishing Irish muscularity for which the company is famous. The stem is short, adding even more punch to its roundhouse. 1925 The next appearance, in the Irish Free State years, came around 1925 for the beautiful tri-fold K&P’s Vienna distributor Phillip Weiss & Söhn issued as the as the R132—which is identical to the 1012. Here, with addition of the P-Lip, is the urtext (or ur-pipe) of K&P’s apple shape. The R90 pictured below it is instrumental in showing K&P’s ability to pitch an English apple for those unable to stomach the stronger Irish fruit. 1937 The so-called “Black & White” 1937 catalog offers the most tantalizing and expansive apples in the history of K&P, with no less than four shapes: the 976 / 90, the 1045 / 86, the 969 / 132 and the 1046 / 458. This is the first sighting of the 86, a number still in use today. Worth calling your attention to is the extraordinary cheeking of these apples. They’re so bulbous and so unlike almost any factory pipe shape from any company today that they fairly take one’s breath away. This must have been the original expansion of the apple chart, as it would quickly be reduced: 969 / 132: the stoutest apple; 1045 / 86 same as 969 / 132, but with a longer stem; 1046 / 458: the middle-size apple; 976 / 90: the smallest apple. the 976 / 90 is the smallest of the four bowls; Comparison of the 1937 Irish Stouts: 969 with 1045 I wondered how different the bowls and shanks were of the two chubbiest apples, the 969 / 132 and the 1045 / 86. As you can see, the…