“Come in and take a load off.”
– American colloquialism, c. 1940

One of the great attractions to pipe-smoking, however unconscious it may sometimes be, lies in the sense of finally getting to sit down and take a load off your feet after a hard day’s work.

I’ve been an enthusiast of pokers, cherrywoods and other sitting shapes almost since I took up pipe-smoking some forty years ago. I suspect part of the satisfaction has to do with this anticipation that it’s time, as that old Desert Father Abba John the Dwarf used to say, to take the string off the bow, put away your tools and relax. There’s something calming about a pipe that can do the same –  just sit down and take care of itself, isn’t there?

Peterson has had two names for such pipes: “setter” in the 1906 catalog, and “flat bottom,” coined by master-carver Paddy…