System Antecedents

The Forerunner of Charles Peterson's Patent System When Gary Hamilton, CPG told me about a massive restoration project he'd undertaken on an antique German gesteckpfeife or "arranged pipe" (aka Jaeger Pipe, German hunter pipe, German Porcelain pipe), I said I hoped he'd document his work so we could run it on the blog. Why? you are asking. Because, I answer, this type of tobacco pipe--as you may recall if you've read the Peterson book--had a big influence on Charles Peterson's design of the System pipe. In the Pete book, co-author Gary Malmberg calls the gesteckpfeife a "component pipe," meaning that like the gesteckpfeife it is composed structurally and visibly composed of more than one part, the parts of which are somewhat interchangeable.  Modern briars, Malmberg points out, primarily take their design cues from "tube pipes," i.e., pipes which appear to be of one piece. In Peterson's current design language, think of the System and army mount ranges as descending from component pipes and the Classic range from tube pipes. The Patent System pipe--and by that I literally mean the K&P Patent Systems that could be bought or ordered from c. 1895-1925 or so--borrow three important elements from the component pipe: 1. The foremost of these, of course, is the reservoir.  Of course CP's reservoir operates on Bernoulli's principle, utilizing the graduated bore.  Note, however, that even in the original gesteckpfeife there was an elementary understanding that allowing the condensate to drain away from the chamber would cool the smoke. 2. The second element involves the  idea of the army mount with its readily distinguishable parts. While it is nearly impossible to take a traditional tenon - mortise pipe and slap on a new stem at random, shenanigans like this are seen with System and army mounts in the "FrankenPetes" seen regularly on eBay, where a smoker has lost or destroyed a System stem and tried to replace it with something else. 3. The third element concerns the "component" aspect of a Patent System back in the day. During the Patent era, as seen in the 1896 and 1906 catalogs, pipemen could select bowl and then choose a mounting style and then choose a stem, in much the same way a  gesteckpfeife was assembled. I might choose, say, a shape 9 bowl and then go for a "Facing" or flat mount and then choose a House Pipe-length stem of 9 inches. Or go the opposite way and choose an almost nose-warmer lengths of the BC and SC short tapered and saddle stems. While Systems have not been sold as components for a hundred or so years now, we still get a vestigial reminder of this principle when K&P rings changes on on the various bowl shapes. The Short Army is a recent occurrence, utilizing a short P-Lip stem on Classic range bowls that we're used to seeing with longer F/T stems.  Another example occurs when we think of the long, large and graceful XL5S we normally see and exchanging that long saddle stem…