Preben Holm Fancy Grade 300 Smooth Freehand Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

Though he would tragically pass away at the age of 42, Preben Holm was one of the pioneering figures in the ‘Danish design’ movement in 20th century pipe-making – a movement that still dominates the high-grade pipe scene. By hand-shaping his pipes on a belt sander, Holm was able to make the most of the patterns of grain hidden within briar, creating spectacular works of pipe art that looked just as good as they smoked. Owing to Holm’s untimely passing, his pipes are even more highly sought after than they were during his lifetime.

As mentioned in a recent newsletter, this is one of the many unsmoked Preben Holm pipes that came through our trade-in program recently. A few of those have already been snapped up by our most devoted newsletter readers (don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already), though there are plenty more to come. This is the first to hit the site proper, and certainly puts a good foot forward.

It belongs to his “Fancy” series, a name that requires a little bit of context. One of the names originally associated with the Scandinavian freehand movement was the “fancy,” or the “Danish fancy.” This term was largely used to denote pipes that we today would simply call “freehands,” not unlike the Nording Freehand lines that dominate the genre today, though not exclusively. Additionally, the word “fancy” did not first arise from the Danish language but was a borrowing from English, particularly as a descriptor of something “modern.” Early catalogs from workshops like WO Larsen, for example, separated their most unconventional shapes from their regular (though still very “Danish”) shapes by referring to the former as “Fancy.” The notion of the Danish Fancy evolved over time, becoming more synonymous with the contemporary “freehand,” likely in part to the sheer force Preben Holm’s name carried in Danish pipe making.

This particular Preben Holm Fancy is a large, beautifully grained and distinctively, quite uncommonly, squat freehand in that genre. In a tradition that was carried on by his protégé Poul Winslow, the pipe is graded according to an ascending scheme that ran from 100 to 300, after which one would encounter mythical models like the Private Collection (a designator also later utilized by Winslow).

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating. It comes with its original (slightly time-worn) box and sleeve.

Details:

Length: 7.2″ / 182.8mm

Bowl Width: 1.04 / 26.41mm

Bowl Depth: 1.26″ / 32.00mm

Weight: 2.5oz / 72g