452. Documenting the Shamrock – Wolfhound – Round Tower Nickel Mount Marks in THE PATENT ERA (!)
PSA
BOOK LAUNCH AT THE CHICAGO SHOW!
Three weeks from now–yikes, it’s getting near–there will be a formidable gathering of Pete Geeks at the Chicago Pipe Show. This year will bring Glen Whelan, Managing Director at K&P, Dan Chasin, who oversees the Pipe Smokers of Ireland forum, Ken Sigel, with his Patent era pipes which he photographed for the new book, Lance Dahl, one of the foremost Pete collectors in the world, as well as Jonathan Gut & His Giant Patent System. There are several others who asked me not to name them given their high security status and the fact they’d have to kill me if I did, etc. etc.
On Friday, the Pete Geek Meet will be held in Smoking Tent #2 from 12-2, followed by my presentation “The Impact of Kapp & Peterson’s 1906 Catalog” inside the hotel. Saturday and Sunday we’ll have two Peterson Pipe Notes tables, one manned by Ken Sigel and Gary Hamilton with estate Petes, Pete Geek tampers & Pipe Rests and one featuring the new 1906 catalog and other books by Yours Truly. And, of course, for anyone who wants to join us, we’ll be making several runs to Portillo’s for Chicago’s (and the World’s) Finest Hotdogs.
Speaking of which, Peterson’s Patent Pipes: The Historic 1906 Catalog is a real beauty, thanks to its designer Gigi and photos my good friend Ken Sigel contributed of his Patent pipes. It begins with an introduction by Peterson’s Managing Director Glen Whelan. There follows an extensive commentary unpacking everything about the catalog, its pipes and its history, the catalog itself in a painstaking digitally restored version, printed full scale for collector use and match-ups, plus an annotated shape index. It’s the largest size book we’ve undertaken at 9 x 12 inches. It’s 188 pages, printed in full color on 80# gloss art book paper. Price at the show will be $50. After we return, I’ll let you know where and when it can be purchased, and how we can get it to everyone outside the US.
This morning I want to revise what I’d previously written on the HALLMARKS tab of the blog (and have yet to update). Of the five types of K&P metal stamps, nickel-mount marks have always been my favorites, perhaps because they’re so rare these days and perhaps because they’re often confused for hallmarks.
A few weeks ago a valuable artifact of Peterson history surfaced on eBay, one important enough for us to stop and take a good look: Patent era nickel-mount marks. Now don’t go rolling your eyes or thinking “no big deal,” because as far as I know this is the first time anyone has documented this.
Previously we thought the earliest these were used was at the beginning of the Irish Free State era (1922-38), but take a look:
The three marks on the ferrule are multivalent symbols chosen to represent Ireland, and if they’re found on Patent era pipes, that means they were known to Charles Peterson. And if known by “Captain” Peterson, I would assert they were very probably created by him. Hiss nephew Alfred Kapp, while a man of solid business acumen, has not emerged in the history of Peterson as someone with anything like the imagination of his uncle.
The Shamrock, coming first in the series of three, of course represents Ireland herself. But this stops short seriously short, as it came to symbolize Ireland because of legends around St. Patrick’s use of it to evangelize the island as well as explain how there could be one God who is also a community of three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Patrick is also said to have suggested the shamrock symbolizes most important Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, derived from St. Paul’s famous poem in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
In Mary McBryde’s The Irish Wolfhound: Symbol of Celtic Splendor, 18th c. naturalist Thomas Bewick describes the Irish Wolfhound as the largest and most beautiful dog in existence, about 36″ high, cinnamon or white, with the kind of disposition really large dogs commonly have: peaceful, mild, gentle with children and a jealous guardian of its family.
For scale, in case you’ve never seen an Irish Wolfhound
Bewick also describes the Wolfhound as as capable of easily besting any Mastiff or Bulldog and putting down a wolf in combat. As the de facto national dog of Ireland, the Wolfhound thus represents home and hearth and the guardian of that most important institution.
As Glendalough was where K&P went for their annual company picnics (“bean feasts”) in the Patent era, this was probably the very tower Charles Peterson had in mind.
The round tower is the most complex of the three nickel mount symbols and certainly the least well-known outside of Ireland. You can’t travel much of Ireland without seeing one of its 65 round towers. They seem to have been constructed between the 7th and 10th centuries on the sites of Celtic churches, like the one I photographed at Glendalough seen above.
There has been endless speculation about the purpose of the round tower, from the silly to the sane to the crackpot. The one at Glendalough may have been constructed by St. Kevin and his monks, who established the church and later cathedral there. It was the site as well of the first functioning university in the western world, and the Celtic monasticism practiced there included women as well as men.
Of the 65 towers, only 13 retain their caps, and it is one of these that K&P chose to represent in their mark. I’m thinking Peterson chose this to symbolize Ireland’s Celtic tradition and pre-Catholic Christian sensibility, since it predated all the troubles between Roman and Protestant.
The nickel mount marks aren’t seen in the 1906 catalog’s letterpress halftones, more’s the pity. All the pipes one would think might have nickel mounts—the clays, Shamrock grade, and II Grade—have the same sterling HMs and curved Peterson’s over Patent mounting marks.
This could mean that the nickel mount marks weren’t applied until after the catalog was created in 1906, or it could mean K&P simply decided not to illustrate the nickel marks. It seems to me that, as fun as they are, and knowing what we know of human nature (“if you got it, you use it”) that they must have been created between 1906 and 1910, when the first patent expired and the shank stamp would have either immediately fallen out of use or gradually done so.
There’s a photo reproduced in the commentary section of the 1906 catalog–it appeared in the big Pete book as well–of the entire company on their annual “beanfeast” to Glendalough. It may very well have been here that Charles Peterson first conceived the idea of the nickel mount marks as he stood gazing at the round tower.
The marks appeared in at least three iterations in what seem to be as many stamps over the decades. They were stamped on both bands and ferrules which, common to all such metallurgy manufacturing during these decades, were brass-plated nickel plate. (The advent of an alloy base metal under the nickel plate seems to have occurred about 40-60 years ago). They were hand-soldered by craftsmen and women in the factory, as can be seen with oxidized examples where a dark gray wavy line from the silver-soldering can usually be seen.
Here’s what I used to think was the first version of the stamps, seen on a wind cap probably stamped (?) after 1905 or early in the Irish Free State era (1928-38)—notice the articulation of the shamrock leaves, the upright Wolfhound and the door at the base of the round tower:
Notice the door to the tower appears at ground level, which they never are. Nevermind, that door is important in telling us we are looking at a round tower and because it would change shapes and even disappear over the decades.
And here’s a clear, deep impression of a second iteration, which actually looks more like the one on the Patent System seen above than on the wind cap:
The round tower has become inconceivably narrow and the cap has become a roof! The Wolfhound has also suffered, the right haunch now resembling the tail of a brontosaurus.
In the following photo of a sandblast 308 Standard System we see what may be a third configuration, this time with K&P maker’s mark over the nickel mount marks and PETERSON in small caps beside K&P:
Which came first? I can’t say. The three stamps as seen in the version above resurfaced on the copper-plated Christmas pipe mounts beginning in 2019 and and continuing through 2022, skipping 2023 due to a copper shortage, and then were back in 2024 to make everyone’s holiday bright–mine, certainly!
To conclude, I don’t think we can overemphasize the importance of these marks, which ought to stand right beside the Assay Office’s official hallmarks and the two officially registered Maker’s Marks (the K & P and the K & P in shields). Historically they stand beside the Gratis Tool and the Thinking Man, because these too were quite probably Charles Peterson creations. I do love them on my copper-mount Christmas Petes.
If at some point in time they could be recovered for use on all nickel mounts and ferrules, well—that’d be the beans, as they say in Ireland.
Scott Forrest CPG makes an important point about all this in his comments below. Scott writes, “I could see no reason why someone couldn’t have sent an old Patent stummel with a damaged ferrule back to Peterson, at which point Peterson would no longer have had Patent ferrules, so would have replaced the old one with one of the ‘newer’ ones with the faux hallmarks. I wonder if there wasn’t a ‘transition’ nickel ferrule that was stamped ‘Patent’ and also had those nice sharp faux hallmarks?” Paul Combs CPG won the bowl (see Comments section), but doesn’t shed any light on why the ferrule would have been replaced.
At this point, I’d have to say I jumped the gun in my enthusiasm. The marks on this particular patent bowl just don’t seem like they could’ve been made in the Patent era. What is needed to be convincing is another and another and perhaps even one more bonafide Patent era Grade 3 with the identical nickel mount marks.
Launching at the 2025 CPCC Show
– The Dracula Tamper –
The Essential Companion for Your Peterson Dracula Series Pipe!
Per Gary Hamilton, CPG: These tampers feature a red & black acrylic swirl shank, complimenting the stems on the Dracula Series pipes. A stamped bat medallion tops off the shank, and the foot is made from morta/ bog-oak in the eroded style finish. Rumor has it that the bog-oak material was discovered by Chas. Mundungus in an old curiosity shop in Transylvania during a layover enroute to Lake Geneva. Story goes that the bog-oak was from a stake driven through the heart of a vampyr many centuries ago.
Sébastien Canévet, CPG sent a fascinating 1908 Patent bulldog. Take a look at those stamps. Sébastien explains, “‘Breveté’ means patented and ‘S.G.D.G.’ stands for ‘Sans Garantie Du Gouvernement’ (patent without government guarantees), an obsolete French patent.”
How interesting that K&P would have this shank stamp in the St. Stephens Green factory. The reproduction of the 1906 catalog contains photos of the front and back entrances of the factory, but I cannot figure out where the little “French” workshop would have been, described by Paddy Larrigan to me as adjoining factory. The Dublin Unitarian Church stands on one side, so perhaps it was in the bottom floor of the paint and hardware supply shop building on the other—the building which caught fire in 1916, resulting in the bottom floor of the factory being severely water damaged.