Former

Former is both the nickname and the brand of Danish pipe maker Hans Jonny Nielsen. The name arose in childhood, when his peers likened him to the English comedian of the day, George Formby; repeated aloud, "Formby" settled into "Former." That the Danish word "former" means "shapes" is a coincidence noticed only afterward. Born in 1941, the maker took his place at the bench at fifteen; with a working history spanning more than sixty years, he is counted among the living links of the Danish school tradition.

From the Repair Bench to Foreman

He entered the trade in the mid-1950s at Poul Rasmussen's repair shop in Copenhagen; some sources name this shop Suhrs Pibereparation. Over the two years spent there, pipes of every brand and in every condition passed through his hands. Pipes taken apart and reassembled served as a kind of school, introducing him to the internal dimensions, bore alignment and typical weaknesses of different makers.

After leaving Rasmussen's, he earned his living at a machine workshop, and in his spare hours assisted part-time Sven Knudsen, who had left W. Ø. Larsen to set up on his own. Following sixteen months of military service, Rasmussen's connections introduced him to Larsen's workshop manager Svend Bang, and in 1962, at twenty-one, he was taken onto the staff. Bang would go on, six years later, to found his own workshop under his own name, S. Bang.

The decade spent at Larsen proved the defining period of his career. He learned to reproduce the catalogue's shapes by hand without deviating from their dimensions, following the path shown by Knudsen, who knew the Larsen models by heart. In time he rose to foreman, taking charge of quality control, training new carvers, and grading the pipes. Under the same roof worked Poul Ilsted, Teddy Knudsen, Tonni Nielsen and Jess Chonowitsch; sources put the number of carvers at anywhere from seventeen to nineteen.

Going Independent

During his years at Larsen he had set up a small bench at home and, outside working hours, begun trying out his own shapes. This bench found its true purpose through an unexpected order: when Emil Chonowitsch and his son Jess could not keep up with a demand arriving from Japan, they handed him a portion of it — fifteen pipes a month. As the work found buyers, the orders grew, and in 1972 he left Larsen to produce solely under his own stamp. Once German tobacconists also came on board, his capacity was filled within three years.

The Swiss Years and Bentley

In 1986 he was offered the job of renovating the old Bru-Bu factory in the Swiss village of Kleinlützel and developing a premium line there. The resulting line was given an English name, Bentley, and its pipes were marked "Bentley Former's Design." The Swiss period lasted around a decade; it was also at this factory that he met his wife, Daniela. Afterward the factory's machinery was bought and moved to Lauenburg on the Elbe in Germany, and Bentley production continued for a time under Dan Pipe. Sources give the relocation date variously as somewhere between 1993 and 1997. Following this period, the maker returned to Denmark along with the machinery; according to records, he continued for some time to turn out this machine-made line alongside his handmade pipes.

Stamp and Style

All pipes carry the stamp "FORMER" and "MADE IN DENMARK." Alongside these appears either "HANDMADE" or "FREEHAND," marking the two branches of production; the latter covers the freehand pieces the maker shapes to follow the grain of the block. Early stamps are noted to have been struck in script lettering, switching to block letters from the mid-1980s onward.

For stems, some pieces use acrylic and others German vulcanite; silver, wood and horn are favored for bands and ornamentation. The careful hand-selection of aged briar blocks and close attention to bore dimensions are considered the hallmark of pipes bearing the Former stamp.