Peterson

Peterson is one of the world's best-known and longest continuously operating pipe brands. Its story begins in 1865, with the pipe business opened by the Kapp brothers. George and Frederick Kapp, who emigrated from Nuremberg to Britain, appear in the 1866 London trade directories as meerschaum pipe manufacturers at an address on Dean Street in Soho.

The brothers parted ways in 1869, and Frederick moved to Dublin around 1874, opening a shop on Grafton Street selling briar and meerschaum pipes. Young craftsman Charles Peterson, born in Latvia, was hired around 1876 to make made-to-order pipes; when Frederick died in 1881, and his wife a year later, the business passed to their young sons. Peterson ran the workshop until the heirs came of age, then went into partnership with Alfred Kapp, giving the firm the name Kapp & Peterson.

The System Pipe and Patents

The invention that wrote Peterson into pipe history is British-Irish patent number 12393, which Charles Peterson filed for on August 8, 1890, and was granted on June 16, 1891. The same design was registered in France as 210944 and in the United States under number 519,135, dated May 1, 1894. In the design, the smoke channel is drilled high, and a small reservoir is carved into the transition area between shank and stem; moisture condensing during a smoke drops into this reservoir instead of reaching the tongue. The result is a distinctly drier, cooler smoke. The firm moved to a larger building on Grafton Street in 1895 and won gold medals at the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Another signature innovation is the P-Lip mouthpiece, patented in 1898: the smoke hole is cut above the tip and directs smoke toward the roof of the mouth rather than the tongue, reducing tongue bite.