Hedelson (Glen Hedelson)

Hedelson is a pipe stamp carrying the name of American cutter Glen Hedelson. Behind it lies no independent company or workshop of the maker's own founding; the name was used in the 1970s to distinguish pieces coming from Hedelson's hand at the studios run by Michael Kabik. For this reason Hedelson-stamped pipes are considered to have come off the same bench, by the same method, as the Sven-Lar and Wenhall series of the same years.

The Virginia Beach Years

The story begins in Virginia Beach. Mel Baker, owner of the tobacco chain Tobak Ltd., had called Kabik to the city in 1973 and had him set up a freehand line under the Sven-Lar brand. Once one of the country's major import distributors, Associated Imports, got involved, order volume grew quickly and the workshop could no longer make do with a single cutter. The cutter is the person who shapes the briar block on a spinning sanding disc and gives the pipe its final form; on a freehand line, the bulk of the design burden falls on their shoulders. Hedelson was hired as this second cutter, according to Kabik's account, through a job program set up for navy personnel finishing their service, and learned the craft at the bench.

What was truly unusual for a series-production studio was that the pipes carried the cutter's name rather than the company's. It is from this practice that the name Hedelson later came to be regarded as a brand in its own right. With the crew expanded, weekly output roughly doubled; according to the figures Kabik gave, around two hundred pipes and about twenty pipe sets a week.

Vajra Briar Works

Baker's turn toward setting up a machine-made line drove the pair away from the business. They settled into a farmhouse in Glen Rock and kept producing Sven-Lars under contract for about a year and a half; Tobak then closed its pipe division entirely. Following this, a deal was struck with the New York-based distributor Wenhall Pipes Ltd., and a joint workshop opened under the name Vajra Briar Works in Bel Air, Maryland. Hedelson was now a partner, not an apprentice. With some names from the Sven-Lar crew joining, the team grew, and output reached several hundred pipes a week.

The "The Presidential" series prepared at Wenhall's request repeated twelve shapes but with every piece still cut by hand; records indicate the design of these shapes owed largely to Hedelson. It is known that Wenhall also had pipes made in Denmark by the Karl Erik workshop in the same years, meaning it worked with both Danish and American cutters.

Departure and the Mark Left Behind

When the partners declined Wenhall's proposal to relocate to Miami, the collaboration ended; the company dissolved shortly after the move, and Vajra closed as well. In these years, as the pipe market contracted, Hedelson left the craft, returned to school, and began teaching high school science in Bel Air. Kabik, meanwhile, continued making pipes.

Hedelson's active period thus scarcely reaches a decade, and falls entirely before the American handmade pipe scene's revival in the 1990s. Exact dates are uncertain: secondary sources place the Wenhall period anywhere from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Pipes carrying his name are rarely seen today, and no detailed record survives of which shapes and side markings the stamp was used with.