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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Thus writes my favorite novelist, Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities (1859), expressing a sentiment I’m sure we can all agree with at the end of this exhausting year. Our hobby continues to grow and expand, and for that we can be grateful, despite forebodings of doom from Capitol Hill and beyond.

However, today is Christmas and yesterday marked the beginning of Hanukkah, so for today we choose Light.

With that established, this year’s Christmas offering from Peterson Pipe Notes is a slender catalog (okay, really a brochure) from the dark days of “The Emergency,” as WWII was known in Ireland.  You can read a bit about it in the historical note in the PDF, but for now I offer it as a slice of things to come, viz., The Peterson Pipe Catalogs, a companion volume to The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson, offering the collector in one volume a digital restoration of all the major Peterson catalogs and many of the minor ones.  By now, faithful reader, you know how slow I am, but patience is a virtue (or so I’m told), and who has more of this precious commodity than we pipemen?

1940-peterson-catalog

Here’s an unrestored image of the catalog. Click on the blue 1940-peterson-catalog above to view or download your own restored copy of the restoration.

I hope you have a good pipe, maybe even a Peterson Elf Army, and your favorite seasonal tobacco to hand. Thanks for your continued patience with the book and all your encouraging words. At the prompting of Marc Dominguez, I’ve updated news regarding the book’s progress under The Peterson Book tab at the top of the page. We’re finishing up layout & design this spring, so 2017 should finally be the year! And in just two short years, God willing, we’ll all be able to raise a tot of Peterson’s “single pot still” whiskey—which isn’t being advertised yet, but I thought you ought to know.  Good things come.

Beannachtaí na Nollag!
Season’s Greetings!

ad from The Irish Examiner, December 16, 1950

pictured at top: 2016 Peterson B10 Elf Army
(photo courtesy Charles Mundungus)