Silver Gray: Smooth Canoe with NAP Stem Tobacco Pipe

Silver Gray's portfolio is peppered with her unique interpretations of the whimsical Hawkbill shape and the appropriately monikered Canoe design seen here. Both are among the talented American carver's signature designs.

The artisan's Canoes are defined by lenticular shaping similar to that of the old school Opera design with a pronounced bisecting ridgeline running down both the fore and aft from the lens-shaped rim, continuing through the transition and terminating above and below the shank at its end. The supple curves and soft shaping contrast the rigid, hard lines in this piece, the juxtaposition strikingly appealing. Dressed in a smooth, rich contrast stain that emphasizes some windswept vertical grain along with handsome birdseye along the lower bowl and shank underside, this piece is topped by a brindled saddle stem of tan and black colors. The unique configuration of the mouthpiece was modeled after Peterson's intriguing NAP stem.

One of Charles Peterson's most iconic patents was for the P-Lip design in 1898, still used today across Peterson's portfolio, but what many don't know is that he also patented another mouthpiece design six years later: the NAP stem, which appeared in Peterson's 1906 catalog only to fade into obscurity and eventual discontinuance in 1928. An almost forgotten innovation, the NAP stem featured a unique button that distributes smoke across the palate via five individual slots from the airway and a "clamshell" design with vents at each side and a horizontal gap at the front. Such engineering won't allow the stem to pass a pipe cleaner, but the idea behind the NAP stem is that, unlike the P-Lip which orients smoke upward across the roof of the mouth, smoke is distributed evenly across the palate. Silver has been fashioning NAP stems by hand since 2019, revitalizing the design, and detailed accounts of her process and of the results can be find at Mark Irwin's renowned Peterson Pipe Notes blog. Cutting such a stem requires time-consuming process and much hands-on work and is a wonderful addition to this Canoe that seems to slice through the air with momentum.