Peterson Killarney Red B10 Fishtail, Late 20th to Early 21st Century

This reference example documents a Peterson pipe from the Killarney Red line, catalogued as shape B10 and fitted with a fishtail mouthpiece. Peterson of Dublin — properly Kapp & Peterson — stands among the most storied names in pipe making. Against that background, the fishtail designation carries specific meaning within Peterson's own vocabulary: it identifies the conventional flat, open-slot bit, offered as the standard alternative to the house P-Lip across many of the company's lines. The Killarney series takes its name from the celebrated lake district of County Kerry, in keeping with Peterson's long tradition of drawing line names from Irish geography. The Killarney Red variant is distinguished within the series by the red stain announced in its name. The B10 marking places the pipe within Peterson's B-prefixed shape group, a family of numbers appearing on the company's later shape charts rather than among the classic numeric shapes of its early catalogues. Dating a standard-line Peterson requires explanation, because the firm does not apply factory date codes to its ordinary production. Attribution of era instead rests on the style of the stampings, the form of the country-of-manufacture mark, the presence of hallmarked silver where a pipe is banded, and the production window of the named line itself. Here, the combination of the Killarney Red designation and a B-series shape number is consistent with Peterson's modern output, supporting an honest bracket of late twentieth to early twenty-first century manufacture. The example entered the archive as an Irish estate piece, and its identification rests on the owner's stated attribution together with the internal consistency of line name, shape number, and mouthpiece designation within Peterson's documented catalogue conventions.