Peterson Donegal Rocky

I recently acquired for study an amazing NOS (new/old stock) Donegal Rocky 01s with its box, sleeve and brochure. Hallmarked with a Celtic lower-case n for 1979, it’s a first-year release of this marvelous ‘short dutch’ bowl shape and convenient reason to take a look back at the long history of Peterson’s iconic "Donegal Rocky" line. The “Donegal Rocky” (in quotation marks), released in 1945 or so, was Kapp & Peterson’s first rusticated line. Not that K&P hadn’t rusticated pipes previously, they just that they hadn’t devoted an entire line to rustication. And they were apparently proud of it, because they gave it a sterling mount along with a black finish and white-stamped P on the mouthpiece. It was part of K&P’s “Product Line,” what I call gateway pipes and others might call an entry-level pipe, as you can see in this shape chart from the 1945 catalog. Like the Shamrock (European version) and “K,” it was originally a fishtail line. For nearly thirty years, from 1947 until 1975, the line continued uninterrupted, black rusticated finish with fishtail mouthpiece and sterling band. from the 1976 Associated Imports Point-of-Sale Brochure Then in 1976, just a year out from their Centennial celebration, Peterson (in an expansive mood) pushed the Donegal up a notch, giving the line a P-Lip. The 1976 engraving doesn’t show it, but you can just glimpse a new, deeper rustication in the (still black) 1978 Associated Imports chart: This rustication was done by a carver in Dublin, Paddy Larrigan told me this past June in Sallynoggin. The artisan did all of Peterson's fantastic rustications from the period: the classic "Pebble Rustics," the early Sherlock Holmes rustics, the Bond Street of Oxford Premier Systems, and the sterling-band P-Lip Donegals. And that’s where this 1979 01s comes in handy, because we can see with much greater clarity the rustication as well as the details of a “Donegal Rocky” at its pinnacle of engineering and finish: It’s worth remarking concerning the removable stinger. This spike-ended aluminum tube is easily removed, leaving the P-Lip mouthpiece strictly a graduated-bore regulation affair. If I were more dedicated, I’d smoke this pipe a few dozen times with and without the stinger and give you a report on what purpose it serves. I wonder if the craftsmen at the factory installed the stinger to approximate the effect of the older bone tenon extensions routinely attached to Classic Range Dublin & London, Classic and Premier lines? With or without the stinger, the pipe smoker should enjoy the benefits of the “Sub-System,” which I talk about at length in The Peterson Pipe. As it is, I’ll leave that to someone else, and happily report their findings.* Here’s the COM stamp, showing Peterson’s love of quotation marks (seen also in the “SPORTS” line) as well as a closer look at the stain and rustication technique: Sometime between 1978 and 1980 the sterling band was dropped to a nickel band and the P-Lip abandoned in favor of the Donegal’s traditional fishtail,…