Relaunch of 309 / 4

PSA

“Rack it Up!”–IPSD (International Pete Smokers Day) is almost here!
“Watson, I’m not surprised you forgot. Be a good fellow and have a photograph of my pipe rack sent to our friend at Peterson Pipe Notes.  You can have the Certified Pete Geek certificate made out to you, and perhaps Mrs. Hudson will quit rolling her eyes behind your back when you smoke that–that thing you call a pipe which most certainly is not a Peterson Patent System.” 

That’s right, IPSD is this Thursday, February 20^th.
Earn a Merit Badge or CPG by sending a photo of how you display your Petes. Include a brief description if you made your own or have something unusual to share. Email to petegeek1896@gmail.com before 12 noon CST on Wednesday.

On May 26^th, 2014, I ran the first PPN post. It was short enough–unlike nearly everything since–to actually be a blog post and not an encyclopedia entry:

“The Treachery of Images,” by Rene Magritte

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Elliot, “Little Gidding”

There’s nothing like beginning with endings. So it is that I bring some late news you may not have heard—2013 was the final year of production for Shape 4 (the Deluxe 4S), known by most Pete Geeks as the 309, but also seen in the Classic Range as the XL339S.

From its first appearance in the 1896 catalog as one of eight “Straight-Sided Bowls” until last year, the 4 (or 309) was one of a handful of original Patent shapes that defined the System.* Indeed, it was featured in the perennial line drawing of The Thinking Man (not the painting) from the time of his appearance in 1906 until now.

The 309 shape, called by Kapp & Peterson throughout most of its history a dutch billiard, was also the preferred pipe as the 4AB for Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes in the final ten films he made for Universal Studios.

Its chamber dimensions, averaging about 2.11 : 1.00 of depth by width or 41mm x 19.3mm, make the 309 an ideal Virginia and Virginia flake pipe, qualifying in many pipemen’s thinking as a “short stack,” but not so narrow as to preclude pressing it into service for English and Oriental tobaccos as well.

The market has apparently reached saturation after 118 years (not a bad continuous run for pipe shape), and the demand is now so slight that Tony Whelan Jr., factory manager in Sallynoggin, told me it has been dropped from production with a few other shapes. But don’t be sad, Flying Ace, because there’s still plenty of examples of this fine shape to be had on the estate market, most going for a song. And like other shapes in Peterson’s catalog, it might just resurface. You never know.

309 AVERAGE MEASUREMENTS
Length: 5.23 in. / 132.84 mm.
Weight: 2.00 oz. / 56.70 g.
Bowl Height: 2.08 in. / 52.83 mm.
Chamber Depth: 1.60 in. / 40.64 mm.
Chamber Diameter: 0.73 in. / 18.54 mm.
Outside Diameter: 1.28 in. / 32.51 mm.

I used for the banner of the first PPN post a parody of Rene Magritte’s famous “The Treachery of Images” seen above (graced now with the traditional black border indicative of mourning the loss of the beloved).  Mine was entitled “This is Not a K&P” and was one of a series of six images I entered into the 2013 photography contest at the 2013 Chicago Pipe Show.  I chose the Magritte it in part because it’s one of my favorite paintings (he did several other fascinating works using pipes) and in part because Western culture has come to such a place that most people, most of the time, don’t seem to know the difference between image and reality, truth and what runs around in the emperor’s new clothes masquerading as virtue. Mostly, though, I was mourning the fact that the Thinking Man’s pipe had slid so far down the slippery slopes of the commercial scale that it was euthanized.

In the years since 2014, I’ve spilled a lot of digital and real ink on shape 4, pursued it as one of only two shapes in a purely “collector” capacity, and even written a book about Basil Rathbone’s use of it in the Sherlock Holmes franchise of the 1930s and 40s. I think it’s important enough to be the icon for the blog site as well as appearing on the cover of The Peterson Pipe: the Story of Kapp & Peterson in 2019 (see Posts #256 and #309 in particular).

It’s not to the taste of most pipe smokers these days, although the dutch billiard was in fact so much a favorite child of Charles Peterson that he made it in eight different sizes as well as placing it in the mouth of the Thinking Man.  Of course there was that detective who also smoked it, keeping it popular among a certain circle of pipe smoking film aficionados from the 1930s through the late night movie programming of the ’80s.  Some say it’s negligible because a lathe can knock one out quite easily. Of course, it could be argued that few artisans could knock one out because it is so highly symmetrical, so Zen in its circularity that it approaches several Christian definitions of God.

And of course, you can’t have thousands of Peterson pipe boxes and endless ephemera printed with images of the Thinking Man on them without someone, somewhere, getting the idea that this is the “Peterson shape.” I’m one of them, of course, so when in January of 2024 Sykes Wilford asked if PPN would like to have the 309 for its own POY—which Peterson was planning to return to the fold in 2025—I asked for the smelling salts (like any good athlete these days). You could complain that we might have had something else, but then again, what else identifies the blog or K&P so well?  ‘Nuff said.

I’m running out of wall space, but this one looks like a candidate for a BIG poster.

As I understand it, the new 309 / 4 is not a “here today, gone tomorrow” release like the recent 444s. The 309 is back in the fold, at least for the foreseeable future. This means that after the sales of this initial batch, K&P will make and release more, like they used to do with the PUB pipe and do with other standard catalog shapes.

I didn’t make it to the opening minutes of Friday’s drop at midday, but when I finally saw it, there were about 150 or so pipes on SPC, with 4 or 5 smooth DeLuxe, 3 or 4 PSB DeLuxe, and then working from the other end, quite a few Rusticated Standard and Heritage finish, a good number of sandblast Standards, and I remember seeing Spigots, but in what finishes I can’t say as I got called away by the roofers and when I got back they were gone. If you remember, let us know in the comments.

The stummels are the exact shape created by Giacomo Penzo and his team for the 4AB POY back in 2021, with the same average measurements. Those, if you read Post #256, are so close to the 4/309 from Patent times on that it would be perhaps impossible for anyone to spot the difference by stummel alone.

DeLuxe 4s

DeLuxe PSB 4s

Spigot Smooth

Spigot Sandblast

Spigot Rusticated

Standard Smooth (Acrylic stem)

Standard Heritage (Acrylic stem)

Standard Sandblast (Acrylic stem)

Thanks to Andy Wike & Steve Mowby of Laudisi
for photos & their invaluable assistance

*And speaking of eight different sizes, the largest and most important of these will (I hope) be available for you to look at in person at the Chicago show. It’s the O2 with a 16 inch house pipe stem, a gift given by Charles Peterson himself to a friend, and is now companioned by Ken Sigel CPG, who will be bringing several of his Patents to the show for the book launch of the 1906 catalog restoration:

Forrest Cormany CPG, a fellow 309er, sent pix of his 7-Day 309 case: