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elcome to another episode of All Pipes Considered. I'm joined by two special guests, Shane Ireland and Sykes Wilford, and we're here to talk about something that is really unique, really special, and probably very unexpected, and that is the return of the Peterson Plateau. So, Sykes, I know that you had talked a little bit about setting some context for this project. Do you want to just jump off there and maybe talk about that?

[Sykes Wilford]: Well, really this story, this iteration of this story starts with when Shane was in Dublin. So he should probably kick this off.

[Shane Ireland]: First of all, if you've been following the Peterson brand for any number of years, a customer of ours for any number of years, you may remember seeing these, you may see them pop up as estates from time to time, but it is a defunct series. And basically, I was in Dublin poking around the factory, being nosy, as I'm wont to do, and Willie, who does all the grading for Peterson, wanted to show me something that he had finished grading out.

So for those of you who may not know, when a bowl is turned, or shaped, in this case, after that, it goes to grading because only then do you know really what is underneath and what the grade looks like. So Willie pulled me aside and said, "Hey, I want to show you something cool." He had just finished grading a batch of plateau blocks and the grades were amazing. Basically, the yield was incredible, the grain looked great, a lot of really cool shapes, and I instantly was like, "What is the plan for these?" And kind of called dibs and ran over to Jonathan and Josh, and said, you know, if these are otherwise unallocated at the moment, I would love to have them for Smokingpipes. And then you were there a week later, and I think they told you that I was desperate to steal them.

[SW]: Yeah. So I was there like a week later, two weeks later or something. And they said that Shane was super excited about these blocks and that we should do something with them. And we had them, and we'd had them for a while, and we didn't have a clear plan for them. And Shane, of course, was proposing we do this, something akin to this with them. We sat down, as we customarily do. Glen, Josh, Jonathan, me, and just tried to figure out how we would do something like this that Peterson had not done in a number of years, sort of in the way of the new Peterson.

So one of the things we decided is that we would lean much more heavily on sandblasts, and the only smooth ones would be the very, very, very top-quality smooth. We would lean heavily on our new ... Well, not that new now, but new over the course of 160-something-years, sandblast finishes, Iora and Rua. If you all have been following these videos or our commentary on Peterson over the last few years, once these bowls get sandblasted, then they get graded. So we have a good idea. You can look at a block and you have a pretty good idea of what that sandblast is going to look like before you sandblast it, but you don't really know.

[SI]: Density of the wood, all kinds of stuff.

[SW]: Yeah, yeah. There are enough outliers that you're sometimes surprised. So we sandblasted all the bowls, and we graded them out, and before we sandblasted them all, and we're still trying to conceive the brand of the series, we thought most of them would end up being this very fetching black sandblast and we put a contrasting acrylic Cumberland stem on this. And as it sort of worked out, a lot more of them were Iora and Rua-quality bowls. Like the density and structure of the sandblast needs to be really good for the contrast sandblasting stains to work and not just look weird and muddy. But we had so many beautiful sandblasts. And that's where we landed, basically. We worked with that, and then we decided that the next thing is that they would all have — with the exception of the black sandblast — P-Lips, which is something of a departure for this series also.

[SI]: And, real quick, just to comment one more time on the quality of the wood and the quality of the grain in these pieces, to end up with a sandblast that is this good, you're basically talking about a straight-grain pipe in the first place. To get that kind of definition and that kind of structure and that kind of contrast, the stuff that ended up sandblasted here, a lot of manufacturers would be really, really happy with that grain as a smooth pipe. And yeah, that was what got me the most excited. You just don't see in a single batch of blocks this kind of grain.

[AW]: I think this is sort of an archetypal Smokingpipes modern Peterson treatment of an idea like this. For those of you who don't know, the Plateau pipe was originally called the Plato. It was originally developed by Paddy Larrigan in the mid-'70s. And it was actually really interesting because at this time, you know, the Danish Freehand-

[SI]: Sort of the height of the Fancy Freehand.

[AW]: Yeah, you know? That was what was really driving the market. And so Paddy developed this idea of doing something similar in the Peterson aesthetic. It's really cool because he did that, and they were pretty popular. There was a point in time where the Peterson "Thinking Man" actually switched to smoking a Plateau pipe for a minute. So that's really interesting. There was also a made-for-TV film called "...And Then He Called For His Pipe" that actually featured Paddy going through all the steps of the process from making and shaping the actual block to turning the ebonite rod, doing all the drilling, all the finishing, and he was narrating the whole thing.

So it's this really ephemeral piece of Peterson history that we just don't really think about that much because we're always thinking about the patent pipes and Charles Peterson's innovations. But it's really unclear how many times the Plato pipe was released in the 20th century. However, when we go to the 21st century, it was released sometime around 2008, and then again in 2017, I believe, when it was renamed the Plateau. And it's really cool because until the 2017 version, they were all pretty much unbanded. There were no really special adornments. The only real signifying mark was the sort of fork tail Peterson logo, which most of these actually do sport, which is a really interesting sort of throwback here.

I find it really interesting that this is very much part of Peterson's history. It is very much part of their design language, albeit not the first thing that you might think of. It's interesting to see these come back and be treated with the sort of modern artisanal lens that I think we as an organization have come to develop. And I think they're actually pretty killer. They're really rad.

You guys mentioned the Iora contrast finish and the Rua contrast finish. Both of those are exceptional. I love what we've been doing with those two finishes, and I think they work exceptionally well with the grain patterns of these blocks. And the Supremes and Naturals are just out of this world.

[SI]: This is one of the Supremes here, and it's really hard to argue with the wood there. That's a gorgeous piece of wood.

[AW]: Yeah, and the finishing too, I think you guys did such a great job on those, all the Peterson guys. It has just the right amount of shimmer, just the right amount of warmth. And most of these are unadorned; they're sort of accented by these craggy plateau crowns and shank faces. But I believe there also will be some that are mounted, right?

[SW]: There will be 10 pieces, five Iora and five Rua, that are mounted.

[AW]: Awesome. That's super cool.

[SI]: Super limited.

[AW]: Yeah, so the 2017 version was the only to ever feature silver. And so, yeah, that's a really cool homage to that as well.

[SI]: I also have to say that I've become particularly fond of the P-Lip over the last couple years. And I have to be honest; for me, it's a little bit less the smoking characteristics and a lot more the comfort level. And I think on a larger format pipe, especially one that is bent, the P-Lip is going to lend itself to pretty effortless hang given that these are oversized in general.

[AW]: And I will argue all day about the smoking characteristics of the P-Lip. I think most of these have P-Lip stems, and I think that that is a wonderful way to tie something like this, which is relatively a modern innovation in Peterson's history, back to the 1906, you know?

[SI]: The roots, yes.

[AW]: And that final Peterson patent, which of course celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. So I think putting the P-Lip on these Freehand pipes was a really smart choice, both aesthetically and as a tribute to Peterson's history.

[SI]: Absolutely.

[AW]: It's a really exciting series. I'm excited to see them back. I love that this serendipitous thing happened as it's wont to do. I think we're always looking for unique opportunities to look to Peterson's past to innovate in the future. And I think this is such a great microcosm of that approach. All right, guys, so any closing thoughts?

[SI]: One other thing I was going to mention: it probably goes without saying, but the overall size of these. So it's built into the Freehand aesthetic, but these are not only gorgeous blocks of wood, they're also capacious. I think the fans of Pub pipes and House pipes, any of the XL stuff, if you really want something with a lot of capacity, this is going to fit the bill as well.

[AW]: Yeah, and I think historically, too, that fits the bill. These have always been quite large.

[SI]: Well, when you get a piece of wood like that, you kind of want to show it off.

[AW]: You have to. Yeah, absolutely.

[SW]: It's also very limited. We only made about 200 at the factory, like 205-ish. There was no target number, we just made what we could make.

[SI]: Yeah. Extremely limited.

[SW]: Very limited.

[AW]: Yeah, so lots of different finishes to look at and lots of different shapes and variations on those shapes. And they're all on-site now, so go check 'em out. Thanks everybody for watching.

[SI]: Thanks, guys.

[SW]: Thanks, everyone.