WO Larsen Select Smooth Lumberman Estate Briar Pipe, Danish Estates

Description

WO Larsen was a tobacconist in Copenhagen Denmark. In the 1960s, when Danish-style pipes were becoming highly sought after, thanks to revolutionary pipe-makers such as Sixten Ivarsson, a workshop was set up on the Larsen premises to produce enough high-grade Danish pipes to meet demand. This workshop was staffed by the emerging masters of Danish pipe-making, such as Sven and Teddy Knudsen, Hans ‘Former’ Nielsen, Jess Chonowitsch, Poul Ilsted, and Benni Jorgensen.

WO Larsen’s ‘Select’ grade pipes were, as the designation implies, some of the finest pipes produced in the famed Copenhagen workshop. As far as I’ve been told by historians of this period, the key difference that separated Select grade pipes from Straight Grain pipes was not necessarily that the latter were ‘better’ pipes, but rather that, while Straight Grain pipes were made entirely by a lone carver (such as Sven Knudsen, Teddy Knudsen, or Benni Jørgensen), Select pipes were a collaborative effort between the workshop’s most skilled craftsmen and craftswomen. Take this very Danish lumberman – looking at the bowl in particular, one can see a quality of grain patterns comparable to many of the Straight Grain pipes that came from the Larsen workshop. As someone who owns many Straight Grain Larsens, I would certainly say that it even outshines a couple of them. Then there’s the shank, which despite being 5 or 6 inches on its own, displays magnificent, consistent bird’s-eye patterns from the end of the bowl to the beginning of the stem. It is a shame that this one didn’t become a Straight Grain, but perhaps this is only because two or three masters helped to craft it, rather than just the one.

The condition is near-mint. Perhaps a little inner rim darkening, but you’d have to look very close to see it.

Details:

Length: 7.6″ / 193.0mm

Bowl Width: 0.86 / 21.84mm

Bowl Depth: 2.01″ / 51.05mm

Weight: 2.4oz / 70g