W.Ø. Larsen

W.Ø. Larsen is a Danish tobacconist founded in Copenhagen in 1864 that, a century later, opened its own pipe workshop and began to be known as a brand name. The shop on Strøget, the city's pedestrian street, became from the 1960s onward both a place where handmade Danish pipes were sold and a center where the generation that would make these pipes was trained. Today its name is counted among the handful of addresses where the formal approach known as the Danish School became institutionalized.

The Tobacconist on Amagertorv

Wilhelm Øckenholt Larsen (1836-1919), who founded the business, was born in Randers; his middle name appears in sources in two different spellings, Øckenholt and Øckelholt. At twenty-eight, in 1864, he opened a tobacco shop and a cigar factory on Copenhagen's Amagertorv square. The shop came in time to be counted among the city's best-known tobacconists, and in 1913 received the royal purveyor (kgl. hofleverandør) title. The business stayed in the same family for generations; in this first century, pipes were only one of the goods sold.

The Shop's Own Workshop

The early 1960s were years when Danish handmade pipes were newly gaining interest; the shop took onto its shelves the pipes of independent masters during this period, chiefly Poul Rasmussen. Demand soon exceeded what a single bench could handle. Guided by proprietor Svend Bang, the solution was found not in buying goods from outside but in setting up its own bench in the rooms next to the shop. The first master to head the workshop was Sven Knudsen; when he left soon after to work under his own name, Hans Nielsen took his place. Nielsen is known in the community by the nickname "Former," a word meaning "shapes" in Danish.

Under Nielsen's leadership the number of benches grew, and the workshop expanded enough to move into the business's unused cigar factory. This staff, which produced the brand's Select and Straight Grain series, also served as a school: Else Larsen, regarded as Denmark's first female pipe master, along with Poul Ilsted, Ph. Vigen, Teddy Knudsen, Tonni Nielsen, Peter Hedegaard, and Jess Chonowitsch, worked or trained here. Most went on to move into production under their own signatures.

The Semi-Classic Line

The pipes coming out of the workshop are gathered in the community under what is called a "semi-classic" line. The distinguishing feature of this line is not abandoning classic molds but softening them: proportions are a bit fuller, lines a bit rounder. In a Larsen billiard, the bowl sits closer to a pear than a cylinder, the point where the bowl and shank meet is separated by a clear transition, and when held, the pipe's weight settles lower than in classic English molds. Warm tones ranging from yellow to orange were preferred in surface finishes. The illustrated catalogs the business published in English between 1960 and 1963 are among the documents those wishing to trace the shape repertoire of the era still consult today.

Transfer and Closure

After Former moved to Switzerland to found the Bentley brand, the workshop's management fell to Søren Refbjerg Rasmussen; the series' straight-grain bodies were worked by Teddy Knudsen's student Benni Jørgensen. The generation that next took over the business saw the future in cheap mass production and absorbed the Georg Jensen pipe factory. Records indicate this choice did not deliver the expected result. The shop in Copenhagen closed in 2005, the brand name passed under the Stanwell umbrella, and Larsen-signed pipes have continued as factory production since that date.