W.O. Larsen Straight Grain Smooth Brandy Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

WO Larsen was a tobacconist in Copenhagen Denmark. In the 1960s, when Danish-style pipes were becoming highly sought after, thanks to revolutionary pipe-makers such as Sixten Ivarsson, a workshop was set up on the Larsen premises to produce enough high-grade Danish pipes to meet demand. This workshop was staffed by the emerging masters of Danish pipe-making, such as Sven and Teddy Knudsen, Hans ‘Former’ Nielsen, Jess Chonowitsch, Poul Ilsted, and Benni Jorgensen.

While even the “average” WO Larsen pipe embodied a rare excellence in pipe design and handicraft, the pinnacle of the workshop’s output were its Straight Grain and Birdseye grades. These were pipes made, from beginning to end, by the hands of WO Larsen’s highest ranking artisans at any given time, such as Sven Knudsen, Former, Tonni Nielsen, Teddy Knudsen, or Benni Jorgensen, and were priced well above WO Larsen’s other pipes. I’ve always struggled with the Larsen stamping in one specific regard: the grade 1 and grade 7 stamps are annoyingly similar, leading me to great difficulties in determining one from the other. I’ll leave it to viewers to decide. As for who made it, this one reminds me very strongly of Peter Hedegaard, another WO Larsen alum, though it could also be a Former.

This pipe is completely unsmoked, with an original bowl coating.

 

Details:

Length: 5.8″ / 147.3mm

Bowl Width: 0.90 / 22.86mm

Bowl Depth: 1.64″ / 41.65mm

Weight: 1.8oz / 52g