Peterson Army Mount 701 Fishtail, Irish Made

This reference example is a Peterson Army Mount, catalogued under the maker's shape number 701 and fitted with a fishtail mouthpiece. Kapp & Peterson, established in Dublin in the second half of the nineteenth century, ranks among the longest continuously operating pipe houses in the world, and the Army Mount is one of its most recognisable constructions. In an army-mounted pipe the stem carries a tapered tenon that seats into a metal-reinforced shank mouth rather than the usual flush push-fit; the design, associated with military use, allows the stem to be withdrawn and refitted without stressing the shank and gives the joint notable resilience in daily handling. The fishtail designation identifies the bit as Peterson's conventional open-draft mouthpiece, the alternative to the firm's patented P-Lip, in which smoke is directed upward through a graduated bore; a fishtail delivers the smoke straight through a standard slot and remains the choice of smokers who prefer an orthodox draw. The shape number 701 places the pipe within Peterson's numbered Irish catalogue of army-mounted forms. Dating a Peterson generally proceeds from its country-of-manufacture stamping, since the wording used on the shank — the various formulations referencing Ireland that the firm employed across its history — shifted with the political and commercial circumstances of different production periods and can bracket a pipe within a broad span. In this instance the identification rests on the owner's description of the piece as Irish made, which confirms Dublin-tradition manufacture without narrowing the span further; the honest bracket is therefore undetermined within twentieth-to-twenty-first-century Peterson production. As an estate pipe, it stands in the archive as a representative example of the Army Mount fishtail configuration, illustrating a construction that has anchored the Peterson range for generations.