Stanwell

Stanwell is Denmark’s oldest surviving pipe company, and one that played a pivotal role in the emergence of the “Danish design” movement in post-war pipe making. Originally named Kyringe, the company was founded in 1942 by Poul Nielsen, before taking on the Stanwell name in 1948. While Stanwell initially intended to make traditional, English-style briars, a chance meeting between Poul Nielsen and the legendary Swedish-born artisan Sixten Ivarsson led to Stanwell adopting a far more modern design philosophy.

From the end of the 1940s onward, Stanwell’s catalogs featured more and more shapes created for the brand by Denmark’s most respected artisans, including Ivarsson, Anne Julie, Tom Eltang, Jess Chonowitsch, and S. Bang. This has continued to be the case right up until the present; Stanwell pipes have evolved with each decade, doing so in a manner that has both reflected changing trends in Danish-style pipe making, and helped to define what those trends would ultimately be.