Peterson sandblast

Last week (June 12th), Smokingpipes.eu, in conjunction with the Peterson shop on Nassau Street in Dublin, released a special limited edition of 16 numbered pipes that deserves celebration and a place in your Peterson Identification Guide, the Nassau Street Edition.* With its sterling band and real Cumberland stem, it’s the finest realization of an unfinished natural sandblast Peterson has yet released. As the advertising copy explains: Back what feels like three lifetimes ago, when we were in the final planning stages for our move into the offices above Peterson of Dublin’s Nassau Street store, both we and the team at Peterson thought it might be kind of neat to put out a special edition pipes to celebrate the union. Something that would be a fusion of Peterson’s Old World charm and Smokingpipes Europe’s more modern sensibilities. What better way then, but to combine Peterson’s traditional silverwork with real Cumberland stems sourced from the factory’s archives, and then finished off with...well....an unfinished virgin sandblast, utilizing the marque’s newly refined blasting technique. Sixteen would be produced in total, covering four of Peterson’s most popular shapes, with eight going to the store and eight to our site. The perfect combination of Peterson's traditional and modern craftsmanship, eight of these exclusive, limited edition pieces are on site now. The numbered sequence was taken from four bowl shapes: the 03 small apple, 107 chubby billiard, 221 small billiard (314 in the System line) and 999c john bull. The idea of the unfinished or natural sandblast “virgin” or “vergin”pipe  (meaning not merely an unfinished but a perfect bowl)  originated with Castello in the early 1960s and is seen mostly in their rusticated Sea Rock line these days. What may be a surprise to new readers of this blog is that Peterson comes legitimately to their own unfinished natural lines via their long-time Italian distributor and collaborator, Mario Lubinski of Lubinski.it. Mario had a request from the gentlemen running the Sansone Smoking Store in Rome for a Peterson sandblast version of the natural vergin, and as documented in an earlier Pipe Notes post, Mario hand-picked from 12 to 16 bowls for three different editions of the Sansone Rogha (meaning "choice"). A Peterson Rogha System (2017) The Sansone Roghas, bowls for which were hand-culled personally by Mario from hundreds of bowls at the Peterson factory, were quite good, but never approached the glamor of Castello’s finishing. But now that Peterson is doing artisan-quality in-house blasting, the game has moved to a new level. Peterson’s blasting philosophy goes beyond Castello’s Old Antiquari blast and to depths and individuality beyond Castello’s beautiful if uniform Sea Rock rustication. The look of a natural vergin as it seasons is not to everyone’s taste, which may go towards explaining why we don’t see it very often. Older smokers remember the days when a pipe with “character” (beat up, weathered, well used) was occasion for demonstration of one’s prowess as a pipe smoker. But for many years the idea has been for one’s pipes…