Peterson Shamrock 221 Fishtail

This reference example is a Peterson Shamrock pipe carrying the factory shape number 221 and fitted with a fishtail mouthpiece, entered into the archive as an Irish estate piece. The firm's reputation rests on two patented innovations of the late nineteenth century — the System reservoir and the P-Lip mouthpiece — but its catalogue has always extended well beyond those designs into conventional straight-bit briars such as the present example. The Shamrock designation identifies one of Peterson's long-standing standard lines, a workhorse grade produced across many decades and familiar to generations of smokers as an accessible expression of the Dublin factory's shape catalogue. Pipes in this line follow the same shape charts as the higher grades, distinguished chiefly by their finish and stamping rather than by their engineering. The fishtail bit noted here is Peterson's term for a traditional flattened mouthpiece, offered as the alternative to the house P-Lip, whose upward-directed smoke hole defines so much of the brand's identity; a fishtail Peterson therefore delivers a conventional draw in an Irish-made frame. The shape number 221 belongs to Peterson's numeric chart, by which the factory has organised its bowls and profiles throughout its history, allowing a given number to be traced across lines and eras. Dating a Peterson ordinarily proceeds from the country-of-manufacture stamp — the wording of the Irish mark shifted several times across the twentieth century — together with any silver hallmarks and the typography of the line stamping.