Lars Ivarsson

Lars Ivarsson (c. 1944 – 11 February 2018) was a Danish pipe maker, son of Sixten Ivarsson, and the second-generation representative of the handmade pipe tradition. Within the line known as the Danish school, his name is remembered for tightening the methods he inherited from his father down to the level of measurement and proportion; a number of details that look ordinary today — the shank's cross-section, the turn of the chamber rim, the continuity of the air channel — are in part traced back to him.

Growing Up at the Bench

His birth year is not clearly recorded; being seventy-three at his death, and being shown as fifty-one in 1996, together point to 1944-45. His childhood passed alongside his father's bench in Copenhagen, and he earned his pocket money there doing small tasks. Accounts differ on the age at which this work began: one account gives eight, while another, based on Ivarsson's own words, gives twelve. In 1969 he finished a business degree at the University of Copenhagen, but he did not leave the bench. By the late 1960s three people worked at the workshop: Sixten, Lars, and Jess Chonowitsch, who had joined Sixten around then. This arrangement broke up when Chonowitsch left in 1970 to set up his own workshop.

In later years Lars preferred rural living. In the mid-1990s he bought a coastal house about a hundred kilometers from Copenhagen and set up his workshop next to it; records listing Danish makers give his address as Nykøbing. Annual output in the same period is given as around seventy pipes.

Measure, Proportion, and Shape

His influence shows less in individual pipes than in decisions about measurement. Moving the shank's cross-section from round to teardrop became a widely used solution in later generations. The blowfish shape, known for its bulging, asymmetrical body, is also credited to him; this attribution rests on a single secondhand account saying the idea came to him while watching a fish in an aquarium. The shape's difficulty lies in requiring the direction of the briar's grain and the body's bulging surfaces to be reconciled within the same block.

On the technical side, he focused on the air channel's measurement: he argued that the channel should run at the same cross-section, without narrowing, from the bottom of the bowl to the tip of the mouthpiece. This cross-section is reported to have been kept at 4 millimeters throughout; since the figure comes secondhand, it should not be taken as certain. He cut his mouthpieces by hand from hard rubber (ebonite) he had shipped in from Germany. He rejected the common belief about the age of briar, openly dismissing the hundred-year-old-wood rumor; he said most of the blocks he used had been seasoned for one to five years, and that overly dried wood made working harder. He also did his own sandblasting at the workshop, in an oven he acquired solely for that purpose.

Stamps

On Ivarsson pipes, the stamp reads "an Ivarsson product," arranged in a ring. By Lars's own account, the right to strike this inscription belonged only to his father, himself, and Chonowitsch. To distinguish the maker, Lars's pipes were stamped with an "L," Sixten's with a sun mark. Most pipes also carry the production year and that year's sequence number; the stamp 24/1970 marks the twenty-fourth pipe made in 1970. Beyond these, he struck a separate fish stamp on pipes he judged flawless by his own standards; the number of pipes carrying this stamp is reported to have stayed around thirty-five through the mid-1990s. Chonowitsch used a bird stamp for the same purpose.

Circle, Family, and Influence

The Copenhagen workshop of the 1960s was a gathering place for Scandinavian pipe making; Swedish maker Bo Nordh came here to learn method, and the resulting friendship lasted for years. Jørn Micke, who also passed through the same circle, is better known in Japan. Ivarsson pipes reached American collectors almost not at all after the 1970s; the bulk of production is said to have gone to Japan. The younger of his two daughters, Nanna Ivarsson (b. 5 April 1974), went to Copenhagen at eighteen to work alongside her grandfather Sixten, and after design training returned to her father's bench, becoming the family's third-generation maker.

Lars Ivarsson died on 11 February 2018 at seventy-three, after a long period battling cancer; he left behind his wife Annette and daughters Nanna and Camilla. His name is remembered today as one of the few that set the measurement and surface habits now established in artisan pipe making.