Blog by Dal Stanton

Last year, while in the US for several months, I landed the largest haul of pipes in my pipe collecting history – which isn’t that ancient!  It was called the Lot of 66 by the eBay seller who represented a non-profit in Texas that sold donated items to help people in need.  Just by the cursory look in the picture below I was very interested in turning these pipes around to benefit our very precious people in need, the Daughters of Bulgaria.  The world is full of broken people experiencing a plethora of painful and often, dehumanizing conditions.  Sometimes all of our efforts seem like a drop in the bucket, but I suppose if a lot of people added their ‘drops’ it might, and often does make a difference, one life at a time.  Well, I won the Lot of 66 on the eBay auction…

Blog by Dal Stanton

There are times a pipe gets your attention just because it has an interesting twist, a surprising shape, or it is just different.  This one falls under this category.  I remember acquiring this pipe when my wife and I were in the US for several months and we joined our son and daughter-in-law for Christmas in Dearborn, Michigan – just a stone throw from Detroit, a new, vibrant city in many ways.  It was December 30^th and I was sitting next to the blazing fireplace in their beautiful home that was built by well-known icon, Henry Ford.  From this home, back during those turbulent years, Henry Ford and his press secretary would air their radio broadcasts that reached the entire country.  A very nice place to celebrate Christmas.  I was tooling through the eBay offering on the app in my iPhone and saw this interesting…

Blog by Dal Stanton

As with people, when you look at pipes, the way you look at them can be cursory – like walking down the sidewalk in the city center of Sofia.  You see colors, fashions, groupings of people, a quick intake of information and not much of the information reaches longer term memory in our brains.  I’ve been looking at the Peretti Lot of 10 that has been my focus over the past weeks as I’ve recommissioned each, one by one.  Interestingly though, not until a pipe reaches the status as “the one” on the worktable do you really start seeing it. The difference might be like walking the city sidewalk as I described above and then comparing this to looking at your new granddaughters for the first time just after their births – which I’ve had the pleasure of in the past several months!  Oh my, you…

Blog by Dal Stanton

I’m almost finished working through the Peretti Lot of 10 I acquired off the eBay auction block.  I’m amazed at the interest in these pipes since I posted a picture of the Peretti Lot on several of my favorite Facebook pipe groups.  I also enjoy posting on Instagram and Facebook giving updates of the restorations on my worktable here in Sofia, Bulgaria.  One of the best things I enjoy about ‘Pipedom’ and social media are the relationships developed around the world with pipe men and women whose love of pipes – their names and their histories, trust people like me who restore these friends enabling them to be passed on to the next generation of pipe men and women.  That’s why I named my pipe space, The Pipe Steward.  We are stewards when we understand that we don’t own, but we merely take care of something…

Blog by Dal Stanton

I have been placing several L. J. Peretti pipes in the hands of new stewards which brings me much satisfaction!  The others were all Oom Pauls – classic Oom Paul’s and some slightly modified by Peretti to serve as Oom Paul sitters.  After I was introduced to L. J. Peretti pipes and restored some that I added to my own collection, I started keeping my eyes open for these pipes because I discovered they were pretty good smokers and that the briar used to make them was not bad – actually, was quite good.  When I saw the Peretti Lot of 10 on the eBay auction block with the seller’s location nearby Peretti’s home of Boston, I figured (correctly) that these all came from a Peretti collector who lived in Boston or near enough to know the Peretti story.  The L. J. Peretti Co. is the…

Blog by Dal Stanton

Athens, Greece, has been fertile ground for me in landing some nice pipes in the Athenian ‘wild’.  An area very close to the well-known Acropolis summit and near-by Mars Hill, where the Apostle Paul gave his defense of the Christian faith, is the Monastiraki market area. I have found several keepers in this area. I was drawn to one antique shop that spilled out onto the sidewalk of a typically narrow, crowded street.  As I looked over the plethora of paraphernalia in the shop, my eye caught sight of two lonely pipes among statuettes, ash trays, jars and lamps.  Immediately I knew one was a definite possibility – a Pete.  I looked quickly to determine if it was Pre-Republic or Republic of Ireland.  It was a Republic, but seemed to carry some weight of years.  What also caught my attention was that it was on the…

Blog by Dal Stanton

When I saw this pipe on the eBay auction block, I wanted it!  I was drawn initially by two factors – first, it was a Comoy’s Pebble Grain.  Secondly, I had never seen a Comoy’s with this shape – a very nice Bent Poker and classy to boot!  Or was it a Poker?  The seller’s tagline said: Details about Comoy’s Pre-Cadogan Pebble Grain Lightweight OOM Paul 609 Made In England.  Uh, Oom Paul?  Here is what I saw:Despite the confusing information which I decided I would sort out later, I was able to dodge last second bidders and land this beautiful, blasted Comoy’s Pebble Grain Bent Poker.  This Comoy’s has been in my ‘Help Me! Basket’ here in Bulgaria for some time waiting to unravel the confusion.  Now, fast forward to a recent visit to Bulgaria of my wife’s sister and her husband, Sarah…

Blog by Dal Stanton

After restoring my first two Oom Pauls (see: LINK) from the L. J. Peretti Co., Tobacconist of Boston, this is the next Oom Paul that came to Bulgaria in the Peretti Lot of 10 I acquired off the eBay auction block.  I posted the picture of the 10 (below) on my favorite Facebook pipe groups (The Gentlemen’s Pipe Smoking Society, Old Codgers Smoking Pipe, Pipe Smokers of America, and Tobacco Pipe Restorers) letting interested pipe men and women know that except for one, the Oom Pauls would be available for personal collections.  All the Perettis restored and placed with new stewards benefit the Daughters of Bulgaria, an effort to help women and girls (and their children!) who have been trafficked and sexually exploited.  This L. J. Peretti Oom Paul Sitter from the Lot of 10 has been commissioned by a pipe man in neighboring…