50th Anniversary pipe - Copenhagen Collection

Background story: Tom Eltang and The Danish Pipe Shop’s 50th Anniversary Facet Billard

As you might know Tom Eltang is not just a pipe maker supplying us with pipes. He is also a shareholder of The Danish Pipe Shop, a good friend and very dedicated to the mission of having a real pipe shop showing Danish made pipes in the middle of Copenhagen.  

Besides all that, Tom is also one of the best pipe designers ever.
He has designed so many iconic shapes baring his own name, numerous hits from Stanwell was designed by Tom and moreover he has made designs with Chacom, Dagner and others.  So we would not miss the chance to get him to design a special anniversary pipe celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2019.

I think we started to discuss what kind of anniversary pipe we wanted for this anniversary year more than two years ago. Ideas went back and forth. Meanwhile young Johannes from Suhr Pipes who works with his pipes at Tom’s work shop started to share his ideas. My idea was a volcano shape like the Stanwell volcano designed by Sixten Ivarsson.  Our main focus was to make something unique, trending and eye catching.
I thought of a volcano shape because it seems that nobody is making this at a reasonable price level. However, Johannes pretty quickly killed my idea and with my pipe making skills at level minus 1000, I had to let the two wise guys play more with various designs.

 One day Tom called me and said: “I got it!” He mentioned the shop, my father and no other or less than Poul Ilsted. For me Poul Ilsted is the best pipe maker ever to have walked this earth, so now Tom had my full attention. Tom talked about how Poul Ilsted started selling his pipes through our shop before the days of the internet, Poul Ilsted’s relationship with my father, me and his facet shapes. Poul’s nickname was the Facet Master or The Facet Master, and he was famous for pipes with facet shanks, octagonal and hexagonal bowls.
So the idea was to make a unique octagonal bowl shapes with an oval shank. A unique design celebrating The Danish Pipe Shop and Poul Ilsted.

To keep it at a price level most pipe smokers can afford, we decided to make it in Copenhagen Collection quality with a plus. Tom and Johannes made two prototypes and went to pipe maker Hans Former Nielsen to use the copy mill the own together. The smallest (medium size pipe) version ended up being the one that got through. They are all showed individually, so what you see is what you get.

Some might think: “Copy mill? Then it’s not handmade?” A copy mill means that you take the master designed by Tom Eltang and then you copy this by machine. But after that there is still a lot of work in sanding, polishing, coloring, fitting the pre-made acrylic stem, polishing again, etc.  This is the same way Castello, Dunhill and others make their pipes.
 
Johannes really stepped up in this process, he has worked his a** off in this project and therefore all the pipes are marked with a unique anniversary logo with Eltang, Suhr Pipes and yes, our anniversary logo.  The very best are added the TE-stamp for Tom Eltang as well.

Check out the pipes in my 50th Jubilee section...

This article was written in March 2019.