Peterson B shapes

Here we are at last, in this fifth installment and final installment cataloging Peterson’s B shape history.*  B49 – B65 includes pipes from the third Sherlock Holmes collection (2011), the Molly Malone collection (2011), the Iceberg 1912 collection (2012), the fourth Antique Collection (2013), and several Limited Edition shapes (now simply known as “Pipe of the Year”) in between. The B shapes are central to understanding the Dublin Era of Peterson pipes (1991 – Present), showing how Peterson’s house style evolved in what may be called “the age of the collectible pipe.”  As a shape-group, they are as distinctive in their own right as the original Patent shapes and the post-Great War shapes of the Irish Free State and Eire eras were in theirs. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2011) Shapes B49, B51, B53, and B56 are all from the third Sherlock Holmes series, released in 2011 (and all bearing XL shape numbers as well as B numbers). I'm a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and of Peterson's three commemorative series, which you will find well-documented in The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson. I've had spectacular success smoking the Sylvius and the Gregson, and am still trying to break in my Hopkins. At some point, I'd like to find a Moran as well.   B49 Ashford Here’s the B49, one of the greatest of the B shapes, making a final bow. It appeared first as the Gregson in 2011's Adventures quartet, then as an XL30 in the Kinsale line, which was created especially for SH shapes. As the B49, the most recent appearance of this almost-stack proportioned bent brandy is in the Derry Rustic nickel-mounted line, although it has previously appeared in the sterling-mount Italian-market Ashford and Kapreis lines.**   Molly Malone Cockels & Mussels (2011) What an awesome set. Usually a set looks better in smooth than rustic, but not here. Maybe it's the shapes; maybe it's the faux-bone colored acrylic stems, but I like them. I'm going to try not and dwell on this, because if I do, I'm certain to get a case of P.A.D. B50 Rock of Cashel The lovely and curvaceous B50 is, appropriately, part of the Molly Malone duet from 2011.  It has appeared in the three standard sterling-mount Italian lines: the Kapp-Royal, the Kapreis, and the Rock of Cashel. In Europe, it also appeared in last year’s Derry Rustic nickel-mount line.   B51 Ashford The B51 poker - cherrywood hybrid, originally appearing as the Hopkins in 2011’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series, is for my money the most outrageous shape in the entire B shapes catalog and deserves a place in the serious Peterson companioner’s rack if only for its outlandish design. It’s an unwieldy behemoth, difficult to hold, heavy as a brick, and looks like it escaped from a Magritte cartoon. I love it. Its first reissue was as shape XL27, in the Kinsale line. Subsequently, it appeared in the Kapreis and Ashford sterling-mount Italian lines, followed last year by…