Porsche Design

Porsche Design is the design company automobile designer Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded in Stuttgart in 1972. The company worked across many product categories, from watches and eyewear to pens and household goods; the side of interest to pipe enthusiasts is the pipe line that emerged in the 1980s. These pipes are counted among the rare cases where an industrial design vocabulary was applied to classic briar shapes.

The Designer and the Design Concept

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (1935–2012) is known as the person who drew the first sketches of the Porsche 911; he held both German and Austrian citizenship and moved his design studio to Zell am See, Austria, in 1974. He is said to have smoked a pipe himself and to have designed the line personally; this information rests on community lore rather than documentation.

The line's visual signature is the horizontal metal fins that wrap around the bowl like a ring. Among enthusiasts, this detail is mostly read as a reference to air-cooled engine fins. A functional role is also attributed to the fins: they are said to dissipate heat by enlarging the outer surface, though no measurement data supports this. The shape repertoire is narrow; records indicate the early period had two basic bodies, one straight and one half-bent, each offered in various colors and metal combinations.

Production: From Oldenkott to Gubbels

The pipes were not made in Porsche Design's own workshop but by contracted manufacturers. The early-period production belonged to the German firm Oldenkott; ebonite mouthpieces were used on these pipes. A shape kinship is noted between the same firm's own "Turbo" line and the Porsche Design pipes. When the agreement broke down, production stopped for several years; the exact date of the break is not clear in the records.

The line was revived in the early 2000s; since sources give the starting year as either 2001 or 2002, the exact year cannot be pinned down. This time, production was undertaken by the Gubbels factory (Elbert Gubbels & Zonen, maker of the Big Ben and Amphora brands) in Roermond, the Netherlands. In the new version, acrylic mouthpieces were used instead of ebonite, and the bodies were drilled to fit a 9mm filter; smoking without a filter was also possible. For more detail on the subject, see the entry on pipe filters and systems.

The most practical way to distinguish the two periods is the metalwork. On early Oldenkott examples, the black or aluminum-toned metal is set flush into the body with no visible gap; on later Gubbels versions, the ring atop the bowl is seen fixed with a screw.

Stamp and Current Status

On the pipes, the brand name is marked with "Porsche Design" in white lettering. Although Gubbels was restructured after filing for bankruptcy in 2012, regular production of the Porsche Design line stopped appearing in the catalog. Today these pipes, particularly the early Oldenkott examples with ebonite mouthpieces, are counted among the pieces that draw collector interest.