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Winter 97/98 Volume I Issue 3 |
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Winter 97/98 Volume I Issue 3 |
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The air is filled with the buzz about Danish pipes, so we went to beautiful Copenhagen, a fabulous tourist destination, especially if you happen to love pipes and tobaccos. A visit to the Paul Olsen "My 0wn Blend" Shop, or W.O. Larsen is worth the visit, let alone the sights of this Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale city and shopper's paradise. The "walking street" shopping precinct has endless surprises, the countryside is blissful and unspoiled, and most Danes speak English and are friendly. So grab your tobacco pouch and pipe case and go! A change or two of clothing is optional.
From architecture to home furnishings to eating utensils, post-war Danish modern design broke with pre-war Europe and put into daily practice the principles that vanguard architects such as Walter Gropius in Germany and Frank Lloyd Wright in America had introduced in the 1920s: "less is more," "form follows function" "organic relationship," and "integrity of materials." The modern use of structural materials such as glass, steel, and light-colored woods, in which the texture and grain was the focus, emphasized structure, function, and organic integrity, as opposed to mere ornamentation. We saw this in the Danish Modem furniture of teakwood and rough fabric, in useful objects, from tables and chairs, to plates, cups, flatware, trays, pitchers, and salad bowls from Dansk.
So what does all that have to do with something as simple as a tobacco pipe? A lot. Because the Danes are a nation of pipesmokers (one in five smokes a pipe), someone was paying attention to the pipe as a design opportunity; yet another useful object needing to be brought into mid-century design parameters.
That someone, by common consent, was Sixton Ivarsson, a naturalized Dane horn in Sweden, who in the late 1940s, started designing pipes for the Stanwell Company (then called Kyringe) to produce by machine, based upon his own rigorously perfect and expensive e handmade models.
What characterized Ivarsson's work was a flowing line that integrated bowl, shank, and mouthpiece into one organic, integral article. In most traditional pipes these three parts can be seen as separate units. For Ivarsson they formed a unity as interrelated as a sculpted stone. When he did distinguish bowl, shank, and mouthpiece, he often called attention to the units by using different materials to contrast the three, such as bamboo or horn fused into the shank, or bands of silver made flush with the shank at the joint with the mouthpiece, for added strength as well as ornamentation.
Although many of these concepts seem commonplace today, most originated with Ivarsson. When he went to work for Stanwell, the largest pipe company in Denmark, the design concepts were institutionalized and became available to the public on a larger scale and at a price most pipe buyers could afford. The idea of good design made available to "everyman" became the company mission, just as it was already the mission of the Danish Modern revolution in home furnishing.
Stanwell today makes well over 100,000 pipes each year, sold worldwide, but mostly in the USA and Germany. Here, in one of the cleanest, brightest, and most modern factories we've ever Seen, Stanwell uses only plateau briar for all of its pipes. "It's the best wood for us because we waste less," says Jens Lillelund, the managing director, a tall, bearded man whose office looks like a page from a modern Danish designer furniture catalog. "Most of the graining is good, and we know that even the pipes which don't become first quality because of appearance will smoke just as well as the top grades." "We are constantly under pressure from our distributors to produce something new. Our main contribution is design," says Jens, "and we have an advantage that no other pipe maker has - 25 or more master pipe makers, most of whom send us their pipes for sandblasting." When Jens and Arne Delhi, the factory manager, come across a design they like, they ask the master pipe maker if they can reproduce it....
Mac Baran, for instance, changed course from a traditional family firm founded in Svendborg when Jorgen Halberg returned to Denmark after spending the war years in the United States. He brought with him what seems like an obvious idea now, perhaps not so clear then: blend to market. Europeans have long preferred a Virginia-based tobacco blend, Americans a burley-base, with Virginia added to brighten the flavor. Halberg developed Golden Blend on American models, but with a Danish touch - a burley-based cake tobacco, deeply flavored with natural essences, licorice, and brown sugars that he thought Americans would like. But he took great care to make certain that the blend was not overly sweet, and that it had the subtle overtones in taste and aroma that the specialty European blends had always cultivated but were lacking in the mass market American blends.
He then went on to develop Mac Baran's Mixture, which elaborated the formula of his first success by fine-tuning the taste with more Virginia in both pressed flake and ribbon form, some toasted Cavendish, and a complex flavor with hints of honey and nuts. The Mixture, subtitled "Scottish Blend," really took off in the U.S. in the '70s, because there was nothing like it. The choice was between the old-fashioned, sometimes heavy-handed, traditional American brands available at every corner store and the tinned imports, largely from England at twice the price, limited in appeal to connoisseurs who preferred unflavored Latakia mixtures and Virginia flakes. Mac Baran's Mixture soared to the top of the charts over three decades ago when it first invaded the American market, and has maintained a top position ever since.
Hallberg succeeded in capturing a large market share because there was a conscious Danish revolution behind him. The pipes of Denmark were shouldering their way into the U.S. market and clearing a path for Danish tobacco. Moreover, Mac Baran positioned itself intentionally between the everyday smoker of mass-market brands and the connoisseur smoker of tinned imports, appealing to the "conscious pipe smoker" (their term), a mostly younger smoker who was being left out of market attention. The proof of their success exists today in the sale of their tobaccos worldwide, with a large variety available almost everywhere. Mac Baran's Mixture is "the national tobacco of Denmark," according to one of the pipe makers we inter-viewed. "Everyone starts with it, and some stay with it forever." Apparently this holds true beyond Denmark….
