Poul Ilsted Bech

Poul Ilsted Bech (d. 2017) is a Danish pipe maker who stamped his pipes simply with the name "Ilsted." He was known for a technique of working the chamber and shank into a series of intersecting flat planes; among collectors he is called "The Facet Master." Having learned the trade at the country's founding workshops ties him to the second generation of the Danish school tradition. Sources give his birth year as 1946.

From Apprenticeship to His Own Bench

Ilsted entered the trade not through formal training but through his own experimentation; he picked up knowledge of molds and proportion by reading whatever pipe publications came his way and drawing shapes. His starting point was Erik Nørding: Nørding sold him a few briar blocks and explained the path to follow at the finishing stage. When the resulting pieces convinced the master, Ilsted decided to take up the trade and worked for a time in Nørding's workshop.

According to the reported work history, his next stop was the newly established pipe factory in Svendborg, on the island of Fyn, where he worked with Jens "Tao" Nielsen for about two years. After a brief return to Nørding, he moved to the W.Ø. Larsen workshop in Copenhagen. At Larsen, production was based on a weekly quota, and a maker who completed his quota early could devote the remaining time to his own pipes; this arrangement is considered to have fueled the working pace common among Larsen's makers of the period.

From Bulldog to the Faceted Chamber

When he started working under his own name, his first fame came from bulldog interpretations. Because his experiments pushed the mold well beyond its usual proportions, he was long known in German collector circles as "Mr. Bulldog." The sharp ridge around the chamber that defines the bulldog family is also considered a forerunner of his later work.

What brought him international recognition, though, was his multi-faceted chambers. On these pipes, the chamber and shank are divided into a series of intersecting flat planes; the difficulty of the work lies in keeping the ridges where the planes meet the same width and unbroken from end to end. Ilsted carried out most of the surface work on a flexible-belt sander, and he was known for his mastery of this tool. Keeping alignment on a curved body is much harder than on a straight one; since a small irregularity could require sandblasting the piece, faceted work stayed limited in number.

Material and Style

He explained his use of Corsican-sourced briar by its tight grain and low flaw rate, according to his own account. He shaped his mouthpieces by hand, favoring black ebonite and Cumberland. For shank rings, spacers, and ornamentation, he used gold, silver, ebony, rosewood, and horn; in later years he began experimenting with materials such as lapis lazuli. Records indicate his annual output was around 170 pipes, of which fewer than a tenth were finished with a sandblasted surface.

Ilsted died in 2017. Thanks to figures who passed through his workshop, such as Manduela Ruger-Kusk, who continues to work under her own name, the faceted-chamber approach has remained a traceable line in contemporary artisan production.