50th Anniversary Bulldog
Nørding Pipes and The Danish Pipe Shop have a long history together.
Erik Nørding was our founder and my father, Steffen Nielsen’s best friend, and our two families have been close since the 1960s.
Last year when we started to prepare the celebration of our shop’s 50th Anniversary one of our goals was to make a few unique projects with selected suppliers close to our hearts and to the shop. Naturally, one of the first that came to mind was Nørding Pipes.
Our mission for the anniversary Nørding pipe was:
- to make a modern version of a classic shop favourite.
- to make a model that is trending right now based on our current sales and what people ask for.
- to make the pipes wear our 50th anniversary logo and also Nørding’s logo.
- to make various finishes and a price level around 150-200 Euro.
- to make them in a limited amount.
Six months ago Erik, his son Knud and I started to discuss the design.
I was quite focused on the Nørding bulldog called model 1, which you can find it the Valhalla series. This model has been sold in our shop for many years, and it was also my father’s personal favourite.
With the rather small model 1 bulldog as the starting point we looked at the classic bulldog from Stanwell (model 32).
We wanted it to stand out, so the possibility of mixing colours of aluminum and real black palm wood gave us an interesting and unique design. Using the aluminum system, you have the option to change it to a 9 mm filter stem.
The best detail on this pipe (and there are many) is for me the rising angle of the shank. That’s a detail Erik gave the pipe just right before we said go. I got the very first prototype and was asked to smoke it very hard to see how it reacted.
As with all bulldog shapes, it can get a little warm on the lower sides of the bowl when you get to the bottom, but it is a perfect smoker.
The briar is top Italian briar (PLS Extra Extra). Stems are made of acrylic with aluminum and the ring is black palm wood. Totally 200 pipes are released for sale. Some are sold as series pipes, and some are sold as individual pipes.
We really hope you will enjoy one of these historical pipes and join us in celebrating our 50th anniversary.
Afterword June 2019: If you saw the jubilee pipe some months ago you might remember the stem was an acrylic/aluminium insert stem. This has been changed to what you see now. After a tremendous sale of the "first edition" jubilee pipe we unfortunately saw some having problems with the shank and the decorations. Nørding realised that the construction of the shank combined with the insert stem can create problems when the stem was pushed too hard into the shank. This pressure can loosen up the decorations. Nørding and we decided to stop selling them and change the stem to the current one. We might emphasise that it's very likely that the old will hold, but we do not want to take the chance. For instance I, Nikolaj, have smoked mine since autumn 2018 and have no problems. Should you have one and have problems do not hesitate to contact us and we will change the stem to the new type.
This article was written in March 2019 and edited in June 2019.
