Recently, Sykes Wilford and Josh Burgess discussed Smokingpipes' 25th Anniversary two-pipe sets from Peterson, available now on-site. Learn more about this monumental release and the inspiration behind both shapes.

Inspiration Behind the Pipes

[Josh Burgess]: I had a love-at-first-sight experience with these shapes. I first moved over to Ireland in 2018 shortly after Peterson became a part of the Laudisi family and they'd set me up with an office there. I moved in but I didn't have any decorations on the wall and so I started rummaging around and found a print from Peterson's 1906 catalog and my first thought was, gosh, this would be a good thing to put on the wall. But then I was immediately taken by the pipes. If I could design Peterson pipes for myself, I think I would come up with something like the Pat B and the Pat OB.

I hung that on my wall front and center in front of my desk, and I spent the next number of years looking at those pipes every day. I really wanted to see a recreation. There's several occasions at Peterson where we could take advantage of a project like this and every time we talked about doing something new or special, I would bring up my old friends, Pat B and Pat OB. I spent a lot of years advocating for them but I wasn't actually in Dublin, Ireland, when the idea occurred for how to use these now.

[Sykes Wilford]: After many years of listening to Josh bring these up, and not finding the right fit for a project, the opportunity arose. About a year and a half ago, I was in Dublin and Glen Whelan and I were trying to figure out what to do for the 160th anniversary of Peterson, which is this year. But these projects take a long time so we started 18 months ago and Glen mentioned this idea of the two shapes. I immediately thought it was a great idea. We were pretty sure Josh would be okay with it because he'd been pushing for it for years.

[JB]: Yeah, when you said you were thinking about Pat B and Pat OB, I didn't need to hear anything else. I was sold.

[SW]: We were working on that, and at the same time, we needed to work on what we were doing for Smokingpipes' 25th anniversary. These were two parallel discussions for a little while and then we realized we could merge them.

For the 25th anniversary of Smokingpipes, a number of different pipe makers have done projects that are special, unusual, and atypical for what they normally do, but also are representative of the work produced by that pipe maker or factory. We did the same thing in 2020 in the depths of the pandemic where a number of different pipe makers released projects to honor Smokingpipes' 20th anniversary.

As in 2020, we did a number of pipes from Peterson with very special sandblasts. It was a big marker for both Peterson and for Smokingpipes to put together this project because we had just started reworking all of our sandblasting processes and such at the factory.

[JB]: That project was a culmination of so much work that we had done in the factory to update and modernize but also to look back into our own history and find inspiration. I look back very fondly on that project as something special we were able to do for Smokingpipes but also as a watershed moment in the life of the factory. I think very similarly about this year's pipe.

[SW]: Very much so. The 160th anniversary is another moment where we had the institutional capability at Peterson to take an idea that required turning completely new shapes, making a completely new stem shape, and have that be something that we could see through to the end of the process. And here we are at the end of that process with really lovely pipes.

[JB]: They're available in a selection of our nicest finishes, and serendipity in 2025 that we got to celebrate both anniversaries.

Combined Anniversary Celebrations

[SW]: As Glen and I were continuing to work on both of these projects, we realized that they really could be one project with a couple of different faces. There's the 160th Anniversary for Peterson, which is a run of 2400 pipes, which we've discussed in other videos and blog posts. In this release, there's 75 two-pipe sets with cases. While the 160th Anniversary pipes are sold singly and you can pick your shape, the Smokingpipes ones are grouped into box sets of two. We have a handful of Supremes, Naturals, Ruas, and Supreme sandblasts.

[JB]: They all show off Peterson's silver work as well.

[SW]: Yes. We're very proud of these. This is a serious milestone for Peterson to be able to put together a project at this scale, of this complexity, and it's something we've been working on for 18 months now.

[JB]: Yeah, and I can't think of a better partner to celebrate it with than Smokingpipes.