Danish School

The Danish School is the design and craft movement born in Copenhagen in the middle of the twentieth century that changed the course of handmade pipes worldwide. Carrying into pipes the functionalist (funktionalisme) sensibility that dominated Danish architecture and furniture design in the 1930s and 40s, the school is known for lines stripped of ornament, a rigor that puts smoking mechanics ahead of aesthetics, and a master-apprentice tradition passed down through generations. Today a significant share of the world's independent pipe makers, wherever they work, are considered heirs of this school, directly or indirectly.

Origins: The Copenhagen Workshops

The movement's founding figure is generally held to be Sixten Ivarsson, who began working during the Second World War years at Suhr's pipe repair workshop (Suhr's Pibereparation) in Copenhagen. Work that began as repair turned in time into design; in Ivarsson's hands, the pipe was rethought according to the era's Danish design principle that "form follows function."

After Ivarsson, the workshop's foreman role passed to Poul Rasmussen, who later set up his own workshop and died in 1967. Known for fine-lined classic shapes and a coloring technique referred to as "laboratory staining," this workshop trained figures such as Emil Chonowitsch, Björn Bengtsson and Tom Eltang; after Rasmussen's death, his wife Anne Julie carried the workshop on. Copenhagen's long-established pipe and tobacco shop W.Ø. Larsen also opened its own workshop in the early 1960s; Else Larsen, known as Denmark's first female pipe maker, along with Poul Ilsted and Hans "Former" Nielsen, worked there. This workshop closed in the mid-1970s.

Design Approach

The school's technical legacy can be summed up in a few principles:

• The path of the smoke comes first: The air channel running from bowl to stem is placed at the center of the design; the drilling work takes priority over aesthetic concerns.

• Hand-cut stem: Rather than a ready-made mold stem, a stem shaped individually for each pipe is the essential principle.

• Following the grain: Shape is determined not by classic molds but by the grain pattern of the briar; the wood's own structure is the design's starting point.

The result of this approach spilling beyond symmetrical molds was the freeform freehand pipe. The style's flamboyant second branch, "fancy freehand," became fashionable in the 1960s and 70s in the hands of Preben Holm and Karl Erik, especially in the United States.

Spread and Legacy

From the early 1950s Sixten Ivarsson designed models for the Stanwell factory; the handmade aesthetic thus spread around the world through mass production, and the concept of "Danish Design" became a mark of quality in the pipe world. In the 1960s, Denmark's pipe exports saw a major rise, particularly in the American market. From the mid-1970s onward, as the large workshops closed, the field was left to independent makers working alone; today's framework for distinguishing handmade (artisan) pipes from factory pipes took shape largely during this period.

One of the features that makes the school unique in the world is a master-apprentice chain spanning three generations. Among those Sixten Ivarsson trained are his son Lars Ivarsson, the Swedish maker Bo Nordh, Jess Chonowitsch, Jørn Micke and the Japanese maker Hiroyuki Tokutomi; the chain extends through Nanna Ivarsson to a third generation and today's global artisan generation. Ivarsson's culture of openness, summed up in his own words that "a bad teacher is one who does not let his student surpass him," is seen as the main reason the school spread so widely. The classic-elegant branch of the tradition was carried into the 2000s by the S. Bang brand, founded in Copenhagen in 1968, and by Tom Eltang's workshop.