Lasse Skovgaard Sandblasted Elephant’s Foot w/ Bamboo Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Danish pipe-making is notable not only for its masters, but its dynasties. The most famous is, of course, Sixten Ivarsson and his son Lars Ivarsson and granddaughter Nanna Ivarsson; but there is also Anne Julie, her son Bernhard Julie, and her grandson Johannes “Suhr” Rasmussen; Ib Loran and his daughter Tine Loran; Kurt Balleby and his daughter Tine Balleby. The list goes on. And it would not be complete without a mention of Lasse Skovgaard Jorgensen, the son of WO Larsen alum and carver of its Straight Grain pipes, Benni Jorgensen. Lasse himself made WO Larsen pipes as a teenager and debuted his solo work in 2004. In the years since, he has become such a renowned figure on the international high-grade scene that his parentage is an afterthought, if a thought at all.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is a certain group of Danish artisans who first came to prominence around the late 1990s and early 2000s whose work resists existing categorizations as far as shape and style goes. Three very notable examples would be Kent Rasmussen, Peter Heding and, of course, Lasse Skovgaard. There is a freedom of form in their pipes that is markedly different from, say, the “Danish fancy” associated with Preben Holm, or the Zen of Kei-ichi Gotoh. Instead, their closest precedent would be in the work of Teddy Knudsen. And when the pipes of Rasmussen, Heding, and Skovgaard do embrace widespread design conventions, they nonetheless find ways to subvert them, giving rise to something quite new. In a way, it could be argued that this makes them the “most Danish” of today’s Danish pipe makers. This pipe, from Lasse Skovgaard, is a good representation of that. Ostensibly an Elephant’s Foot in the vein first established by Bo Nordh—including the bamboo shank extension with which the shape’s signature bowl is commonly paired—the design is yet remarkably different from almost any other rendition. The shaping of the bowl is uncannily fluid, with a real sense of motion, and even speed, communicated by the contractions and expansions of its figure. Perhaps one day language will catch up to Skovgaard et al. and we’ll be able to identify their works with just one or two words. Until then, perhaps the pipes themselves will have to do the talking for us.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 6.2″ / 157.4mm

Bowl Width: 0.95 / 24.13mm

Bowl Depth: 1.80″ / 45.72mm

Weight: 2.3oz / 66g