It's difficult to imagine anyone who has more profoundly embodied and defined the workmanship and culture of Kapp & Peterson than Paddy Larrigan, who celebrated his 100th birthday on the 7th of this month. Of those 100 years, he's spent most handcrafting pipes and training new craftspeople to do the same. Paddy was trained as a pipe carver by Jimmy Malone, who learned directly from Charles Peterson himself, making Paddy the closest craftsman to Charles' own techniques.

Peterson is a workshop dedicated not only to the traditions of their own unique pipe language, but to the nurturing of its staff, and Paddy's family history is deeply intertwined with that of Peterson. Paddy comes from a family of loyal Peterson craftspeople. His parents met while working at Peterson, and his Aunt Nellie, who worked there for 59 years, was there when 22-year-old Paddy joined the workshop in 1946. His brother, silversmith Liam Larrigan, worked for decades at Peterson, and Bernard Larrigan, Paddy's son, worked there for more than a decade.

Many Peterson employees have spent most of their lives at the fabled workshop. Here in the U.S., the average tenure with a single company is four years, hardly a blip on the timeline of many at Peterson. That sort of loyalty, dedication, and contentment with a job seems almost mythological. While many of us are drawn to lifelong relationships with Peterson pipes, the same can be said for those who make them.

Paddy retired in 1975 after 30 years of pipe making, but it lasted only for the weekend. He retired on a Friday and returned the following Monday on a part-time basis, and he continued that for another 20 years. "When I started in 1997," says Production Manager Jonathan Fields, "Paddy worked only three or four half days a week because he had retired, but he'd come back to do training with people, which was mainly me at the time." So 100 years after the System Pipe was first being developed and patented, Jonathan was able to learn the craft from someone just a single generation of carvers removed from Charles Peterson. "I did most of my training under Paddy, learning to work the lathes and other machines we still use today. He taught me some of the silverwork and how to bend stems, things like that."

Paddy was involved in much of the training of the current generation of craftspeople. "We had a lot of work on the floor during that time," says Jonathan. "There was a big influx of new people to accommodate the volume. Paddy came back to do the training and help out the company." His commitment lasted beyond his retirement. He was dedicated to making sure the company prospered and the pipes maintained quality.

He had certainly acquired the skills to do so. Paddy started at the workshop with silversmithing, using chisels and lathes to turn the silver bands and mounts. The learning curve was steep and he spent considerable time on silver before he started learning to turn bowls, then moving on to doing repairs, of which there were plenty. He turned the replacement stems by hand and learned the intricacies of pipe making by fixing what could go wrong. He began making mouthpieces, turning the tenons by hand, and he began building his well-known affection for Peterson's space-fitting stems. Space-fitting stems maintain a gap between the face of the shank and the expanded part of the stem, allowing for any wear of the tenon over the long life of the pipe.

"The Deluxe System Space-Fitting is Paddy's favorite pipe," says Pipe Manager and Senior Craftsman Joe Kenny, who worked at the same time as Paddy for two decades. Joe is another long-term craftsman; he's been with Peterson for 48 years and now uses the same machinery that Paddy used. "He would hand make those stems, 40 or 50 years ago, out of vulcanite rod. When I spoke with him last week, he talked about System stems — how the smoke channel through the stem tapers in a graduated bore. Paddy used to make the drill bits necessary for that out of metal files, and he hollowed the channels with the drills that he handmade."

Like Jonathan, Joe learned much of his craft from Paddy. "Paddy did the pipe repairs, and he showed me. One that we did probably most often is plugging the bottom of the tobacco chamber where it would be scraped out aggressively. We used alabaster to do that, and they actually smoked like new afterward."

Paddy was relied upon for just about everything while he was with Peterson. He repaired machinery and developed processes, repaired pipes, performed sandblasting and rustication, crafted meerschaum bowl linings, threaded the bone for screw-in stems, trained personnel, bent stems, graded briar, crafted silver, and mastered every function necessary for Peterson pipes to look and perform at an optimum level for most of the 20th century.

"When production increased to meet demand," says Joe, "and we were adding more shapes, Paddy developed some of the necessary processes and he brought different manufacturing stages to a level where we could produce more and be more efficient while maintaining high standards."

"It's different now than when Paddy was here," says Jonathan. "We have more stain and stem colors now than Paddy had access to. Half of our colors didn't exist 50 years ago. And our processes have streamlined and become more efficient. We have easy access now to buffing wheels that would've been hard to get 50 or 60 years ago. And the acrylics would've been only black back then, and probably the amber/yellow as well."

"Paddy used to do a lot by hand years ago," says Joe, "but when production increased and more shapes were added, it became very difficult to do as much by hand. Paddy developed some of the necessary automation and he brought different manufacturing stages to a level where we could produce more."

"It's different now than when Paddy did so much by hand," says Jonathan. "We have more stain and stem colors now than Paddy had access to. Half of our colors didn't exist 50 years ago. And our processes have streamlined and become more efficient. We have easy access now to buffing wheels that would've been hard to get 50 or 60 years ago. And the acrylics would've been only black back then, and probably the amber/yellow as well."

Paddy may be from a different era of pipe making, but he made the most of his available materials and his creativity is still felt today. He designed the first System Peterson Calabash, which became the first shape in the Sherlock Holmes series; he designed all of the original Sherlock Holmes shapes.

He also designed the Dunmore System, which was a System pipe that could sit on its own, and he was responsible for the Peterson plateau-top Freehand. "I've got an engineering mind," says Paddy in The Peterson Pipe (page 35). "I was always interested in engineering ... it helped me work out all these problems. I was the fellow that tried to solve all the problems."

Although he no longer smokes, Paddy is quoted in The Peterson Pipe (page 34) as having been fond of System pipes in general, but "My favorite shape is the 20s / 314. I used to smoke Erinmore all the time."

A legend in Peterson pipe lore, Paddy elicits admiration from the people of Peterson as well as knowledgeable enthusiasts. "I met Paddy Larrigan in 2019," says Perterson Managing Director Josh Burgess. "We had the honor of hosting him and his brother, Liam, at a reception in Sallynoggin held to commemorate the publication of Mark Irwin's and Gary Malmberg's The Peterson Pipe. It was a special moment: To meet and talk with Paddy was to make a living connection to Peterson's past. The current staff held him in a kind of reverence as he walked through the factory and sat at machines he once operated."

Paddy's presence represented a historic connection to the history of Peterson for many that day. "But he challenged us in a way, too," says Josh. "Paddy was a skilled craftsman, as well as a creative inventor of many pipes that are now regarded as Peterson classics. Talking with Paddy reinforced our commitment to making better pipes, to becoming better craftsmen, and to celebrating our own traditions. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Paddy, not only for a life spent in service to Peterson, but for inspiring a new generation of us at Peterson to commit ourselves to our traditions and pass them on."

Paddy Larrigan enjoyed an illustrious career with Peterson and made an indelible mark on the modern Peterson pipe that we appreciate today. On the occasion of his centenary birthday, many of us will reflect on his contributions, appreciate the designs and innovations for which he is responsible, and reflect on the remarkable 100 years that this master craftsman has experienced, the smoking instruments that he has contributed, and the historic developments in pipe making that he has achieved.

Bibliography

• Irwin, Mark and Malmberg, Gary, The Peterson Pipe: The Story of Kapp & Peterson (2018).