Heeschen (Peter Heeschen)

Heeschen is the signature under which Danish master Peter Heeschen (1945-2015) produced handmade briar pipes at his one-man workshop near Odense. Visible from the last years of the twentieth century, this signature is regarded as a late link in the Danish school tradition: light stummels resting on proportion rather than ornament, flowing lines, and hand-cut mouthpieces.

A Master Who Sat Down at the Bench Late

Heeschen's return to the craft began with a loss. At fifty-three he became unemployed when the institution he worked for cut its budget, and, records indicate, he set his pipe bench back up in the late 1990s. A friend's simple promotional page did better than expected; the first series found buyers quickly. That interest in top-tier Danish-made pipes was at its peak in the early 2000s also eased this return. The following year he attended the Chicago pipe show and rarely missed these gatherings in subsequent years.

Yet his acquaintance with the craft was much older. Born in 1945 in Copenhagen, Heeschen spent his entire adult life on the island of Fyn, around Odense. At seventeen, following the example of his father, who made pipes from cherry wood, he made his first attempt; but for a long time this pursuit remained a spare-time affair. In between he worked as a machine-tool technician, then moved into social work. He never learned mastery at anyone's side; he was, to a large extent, self-taught.

Materials and Craftsmanship

The workshop, attached to a farmhouse, turned out between three hundred and four hundred pipes a year — a high pace for a one-man bench. He sourced his briar blocks, records indicate, from Calabria, and kept a large stock on hand.

On the surface he pursued only two paths: plain (smooth) and sandblast. In his final period he abandoned both the rustic finish and chambers fitted for a 9 mm filter (see surface finishes). He hand-cut his mouthpieces from vulcanite rod, occasionally using tortoiseshell-patterned acrylic. Placing thin bands of materials such as rosewood, tulipwood, black palm, boxwood, horn, or curly birch between shank and mouthpiece is the most recognizable detail of his craftsmanship. Black bamboo shanks and silver bands are also associated with him. Among the technical qualities frequently cited by the community are broadly drilled smoke channels and gap-free mortise-and-tenon fits.

Shapes, Grades, and Legacy

His shape repertoire is dominated by the bulldog, egg, and cherrywood families, along with a stummel the maker called the "P." Pipes are stamped with three letters: B, A, and S. The top grade is S; sources do not detail exactly what criteria the letters were assigned by. His main markets became the United States, Japan, and China; though he traveled little in his early years, he later built his show calendar around these countries.

Peter Heeschen died unexpectedly on the night of November 28, 2015, at seventy years old. (Pipedia's note states the news was announced on December 1.) Since the workshop closed with him, the Heeschen signature is seen today only in collections and on the secondary market.