WO Larsen Straight Grain 7 Smooth Acorn w/ Plateaux Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked

Description

WO Larsen was a world-renowned tobacconist in Copenhagen Denmark and a major player in modern pipe history. 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 accordingly. Unlike most other WO Larsen pipes, these were also graded, typically on an ascending 1-10 scale, with the only higher accolade being the mythical “Pearl” grade. This one is an impressive, grade 7 piece, and certainly looks the part, but the most striking thing about it (apart from its expectedly tight vertical patterning), for me at least, is how much it resembles some of the earlier Straight Grain designs. While by no means a “late” output, the nomenclature suggests that this was made around about the late 1960s or 1970s, but the minimalistic, plateaux-top acorn shaping is strongly evocative of the “Fancy” Larsens, carved by Sven Knudsen in the early 1960s. Who made it? I can’t be sure. But they certainly knew what they were doing, and they had good taste.

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

 

Details:

Length: 5.5″ / 139.7mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.58″ / 40.13mm

Weight: 1.4oz / 42g