Diamonds In The Rough? Time will tell.

The old 308 System is one of my favorite shapes in the Peterson catalog. It’s an original Charles Peterson patent shape (#14), by which I mean it’s found in the 1896 and 1906 catalogs and was a regular in the shape chart until its last official appearance in the 1947 chart. It continued to be a favorite here in the United States and was featured in several of the Rogers Imports catalogs and brochures in the 1950s. I have two 308s and a 14s, and all three were made after 1949, bearing the MADE IN over THE REPUBIC over OF IRELAND country of manufacture (COM) stamp.



I had originally thought the 308 was probably deleted from the catalog sometime in the early 1960s, although as I said, it doesn’t appear in any official K&P ephemera after 1947. (I have more stories of this wonderful shape, but they’ll have to wait for the book.) Jorgen Jensen read the original version of this blog and (as you can see in the comments), remarked that he bought a new 308 Premier (not new/old stock) at the Grafton Street store on 29 July 2001. I contacted Tony Whelan, Jr., the following day, and he replied that, to the best of his recollection, the 308 was still being made in the late 1990s. This corroborates Jorgen’s belief that it was in fact a new pipe. This opens up a new can of worms, one which is worth pondering. At this point, I can only say (as I say in the manuscript of the book) that just because a shape doesn’t appear in the catalog, doesn’t mean it’s not still in production at the factory.

In the chapter on smoking the System pipe, we find a sidebar on stem bends, and throughout the book there are representative catalog pages from each era of Peterson production. This particular bend, called in the book a “boomerang,” occurs at the middle of the stem and is approximately 120 degrees. I love this bend, because it brings the pipe closer to the smoker, making it weigh less when clinched than other bends (the “moment arm,” I think my dad the engineer calls it).

Examples of the boomerang are found as early as the 1896 catalog, but became widespread in the late 1940s, then seem to have disappeared entirely by the early 1960s, which is why they look so striking to contemporary pipemen.