Peterson Aran

Late last fall Peterson rebooted the 406 Large Prince after an absence of twenty years, and just recently they’ve launched two new lines: the Aran Rusticated and the Rosslare Rusticated. Both are cause for excitement among Kappnists (aka Pete Freeks) and I hope will be of interest to fans of rusticated pipes as well. Like John P. Seiler and William D. Kotyk in their classic article for The Pipe Collector (Seiler_rough), I find comfort and a kind of heightened awareness when smoking rough pipes, pipes that talk to my thumb, index and middle finger. To shift analogies, it’s sometimes the difference between driving an automatic and a stick: with a good rusticated pipe you just feel more in control, more aware of the contours and nuances of the road. The New Aran Rusticated 606 The history of Peterson’s use of rustication is, like so much else about the brand, long and varied and has gone almost totally under the radar of the hobby community. But let me start at the end with these two new lines and work my way back.   1. The New Aran Rusticated and Rosslare Rusticated Lines In-house rustication of a classic 999 Joshua Burgess, managing director at Peterson, recently told me: Shortly after Laudisi took over management of the factory, we identified rustication as an area where we could make swift improvements in the pipes. We weren’t trying to do anything new. Instead, we wanted to restore the old Peterson tradition of making pipes with a craggy rustication rather than the overly uniform and shallow texture that had become more typical in recent years. There was a strong institutional memory and fondness for the old rustication among the craftsmen here, so we had a solid consensus around what we were trying to achieve. We’re all pretty happy with the results. Rusticating pipes, as many know, is a time-consuming process. We have two gents in production who are particularly skilled at it: John Sinclair, who is a relatively new hire for us here, and Simon Ellard, whose primary responsibility is actually working with [silversmith] Jason Hinch in mounting. In addition to being time consuming, rustication is also physically demanding, so John and Simon tend to trade off on that station just to keep their hands rested. In addition to those two guys, Joe Kenny, our Pipe Manager and Senior Craftsman, also helps out with rusticating. So let’s take a look at the new lines, beginning with the Aran Rusticated. The Aran line goes back over 50 years, being issued originally as a rusticated line in 1965, reissued as a rustic in 1975 in some fascinating XL exclusive-to-line shapes, falling out of the catalog and then in the late 90s returning in the current smooth style, first with no band, then (at Mario Lubinksi's suggestion) in 2010 with a nickel band, and now available either way. The Aran Rusticated features an espresso-over-caramel stain (about which more in a moment), soft hand rustication, the large Peterson script over…