SON (Skovbo Nording) Smooth Freehand Estate Briar Pipe, Danish Estates

About this pipe:

if you’re not familiar with the SON name itself, if you know anything about Danish pipes, you’ll probably recognize one of the names that it was an acronym for. The brand was created as a partnership between Aage Skovbo and (in Danish, ‘og‘) Erik Nording, but Skovbo soon left, with Nording taking over as the sole creator of SON pipes. This went on for a few years before Nording dissolved SON to create a brand under his own name. As such, son pipes are not only distinctly Danish – they’re historical arteficts from a time when ‘Danish’ had only just begun to mean something in the world of pipes.

If you like freehand shapes and Danish pipe history, then SON is the perfect make for you. I know, I sound a little like a used car salesman saying that, but it’s true. These were some of the very first pipes in the style we have come to know as ‘freehand,’ made by Skovbo and Nording in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this one, you can see exactly why the freehand approach went in the direction it did – the grain. The shape of this pipe has been almost entirely designed around bringing the natural flame grain patterns of the briar out, which it does spectacularly.

Details:

Length: 5.6″

Bowl Width: 22.8mm

Bowl Depth: 1.8″

Weight: 2.3oz / 66g