S Bang Pre-1984 Smooth Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Danish Estates

Description

Originally founded in 1968 by Svend Bang, a former store manager at Denmark’s legendary W.Ø. Larsen, S. Bang would go on to become a legend in its own right, one that would rival even Larsen in fame and acclaim. While Svend himself was not a pipe-maker, he was able to enlist some of the most talented pipe-makers in Denmark to create the S. Bang pipes. In the early days, this included figures such as Ph. Vigen, but it is two makers in particular who would become synonymous with the S. Bang name: Per Hansen and Ulf Noltensmeier. Per and Ulf joined the S. Bang workshop in the early 1970s, and in 1984, when Svend Bang himself retired, Per and Ulf formally took over S. Bang. Per and Ulf’s creations were as admired and coveted as their Danish contemporaries, such as Jess Chonowitsch, Tom Eltang, and Hans ‘Former’ Nielsen. Per and Ulf retired and dissolved S. Bang in 2019, much to the disappointment of pipe smokers and collectors across the world. 

How do you make something more “round”? Perfect circles and other questions of academic geometry aside, it’s not an unreasonable thing to ask when designing 3D objects, especially designs that are as much art as they are instruments. With pipes, so long as you’re thinking inside the box that is tradition, there’s only so far you can go in rounding out the bowl. Bowls, after all, are always joined to shanks, and the shape of one is very much dependent on the other, both in terms of the look and the functioning of the pipe. The shank establishes a line that the bowl has to integrate with, so the base of the bowl typically mirrors the curvature of that underneath the shank, resulting in bowls designs that are certainly round, but still much less so on their underside. But what happens if you lower the shank slightly? Which is the same as saying, what if your raise the bowl slightly, in relation to the shank it’s joined to? What happens is that there’s more space between the two, meaning more room for the bowl to balloon out before it intersects with the shank, and therefore to become rounder. And that’s what’s happening here. It’s amazing what one little shift in design approach – and of course, a more substantial amount of thought and skill on the part of the craftsman – can do.

The condition is great. Some minor handling marks here and there, perhaps, but nothing I’d consider significant.

 

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.95 / 24.13mm

Bowl Depth: 1.69″ / 42.92mm

Weight: 2.4oz / 70g