|
As heir to the Ivarsson dynasty, Nanna’s story rightfully begins with her grandfather, Sixten. From articles to symposia, enough has been said of Sixten to fill many volumes, but Sixten’s importance to the world of pipes can never be overstated. More than any other single person, Sixten revolutionized pipe making and, thereby, created what we think of as the modern high grade pipe-- whether that pipe is made in Denmark, Japan, the United States or elsewhere. Sixten is widely heralded as the greatest pipe maker to have ever lived. His work far exceeded that of his contemporaries and he conceived of pipes in a fundamentally new way. Perhaps more importantly, he conveyed his new ideas to successive generations of pipe makers: directly, as is the case with Lars and Nanna Ivarsson, Jess Chonowitsch, Bo Nordh and Hiroyuki Tokutomi, among others, and, indirectly by way of exposure to his work and that of those students. Arguably, Sixten and Lars’ greatest achievement has been the extent to which they disseminated those aesthetic ideas-- ideas that have influenced every high grade pipe maker since. That influence, while essential to understanding the Ivarsson story, is, of course, only part of the tale. |  |
Born in 1974, Nanna very much grew up in her father’s and grandfather’s workshop. Of Lars’ two daughters, Nanna gravitated to that creative space, loving both the fun and the discipline, which that atmosphere exuded. Nanna recalls fondly the hours she spent as a small child making objects from scrap briar, under the watchful, doting eyes of her father and grandfather. A little later, those 'objects' became pipes and at the age of nine, she sold her first pipe. She continued to make and sell the occasional pipe, until, at eighteen, she apprenticed herself to Sixten at his workshop in Copenhagen. In her twenties, as her grandfather's health slowly deteriorated, she became Sixten’s eyes and hands.
Not surprisingly, during the 1990s, Nanna also pursued her other great love, industrial design. As much as she enjoyed pipes and pipe making, it was imperative for her to strike out on a new path, independent of this legacy and to make a name for herself outside of the world of pipes. Nanna attended the six-year design program at the famous and highly selective Danmarks Designskole. Following that, she worked for a highly prestigious design firm for two years. Indeed, her designs of furniture, knives and other household goods continue to be sold throughout Europe and the world, both under her own name and under the names of others.
 |
Though successful, her career as a designer left her unfulfilled. Though proud of her success, Nanna was surprised by the corporate approach to industrial design and frustrated by the distance between the artist and her work. As Nanna is so fond of saying, making pipes makes her happy.
She went to her father’s workshop and continued her apprenticeship with him for a year. Having demonstrated her skill to the most exacting of masters, Lars agreed that Nanna should set up her own shop, complete with Sixten’s old machines and tools. Today, she has a small workshop in a building inhabited by artists and designers, in a semi-industrial part of Copenhagen. Since much of her machinery was inherited from her grandfather, the same machines that were used to revolutionize pipe making in the 1960s and 1970s are now used by Nanna to create her exceptional pipes. |
Nanna's connection to her grandfather extended beyond his status as her teacher and even beyond their mutual familial affection; Nanna and Sixten shared a deep creative bond, also. Stepping back a few years, it’s easy to see Sixten’s work as a pipe making corollary to the ‘Danish Modern’ architecture and design movement that took place concurrently to Sixten’s reimagining of the high grade pipe. One of Sixten’s great achievements was to look at a pipe holistically, instead of looking at a pipe as merely a collection of components. Not surprisingly, this was also one of the most important components in the 'Danish Modern' design movement: furniture was conceived as a complete entity, not as discrete components, for example. And while those larger stylistic movements influenced both Sixten and Lars, Nanna's design training and experience means that her aesthetic sense is even more firmly rooted in that stylistic tradition.
Just as Arne Jacobsen was conceiving of furniture and architecture holistically (such as is the case with the SAS-Radisson Hotel in Copenhagen where he decided everything from the architectural design down to the chairs and other furnishings in the late 1950s), Sixten was conceiving of a pipe not as discrete components to be combined, but as a whole, integrated idea. To Sixten, the stem was as important as the bowl in the visual structure of a pipe, not just the piece of rubber that connected the pipe to the smoker, just as, to Jacobsen, the furniture that adorned the lobby was as important to the overall idea of the hotel as was the steel and glass super-structure.
It's far too easy to simply look at the work of these three pipe makers and see a logical progression. Nanna, while her father's daughter, maintains an aesthetic sense that is quite distinct. To a great degree, Lars' style seems at least partially informed by an underlying natural, organic aesthetic, whereas Nanna's work seems to draw more heavily on the modernistic artistic and design traditions which she so dearly loves and studied so carefully. It's fascinating that while Sixten's ideas can be considered within the larger aesthetic movements of the period, it is, to a great degree, his granddaughter, forty years later, that most fully unites this kind of pipe making with the stylistic tradition that spawned it.
In her design work, the stylistic precedence is most obvious, since, clearly, it’s far easier to compare a chair to a chair than a pipe to a chair. Nanna’s ‘Pipe Smoker’s Chair’, which has been designed (right) and prototyped, but is not yet in production, draws heavily from Scandinavian design furniture of the 1950s and 1960s in terms of conception and materials and aesthetic-- simple, clean lines with the form following the function. More tellingly though, the shape of the chair was inspired by a pipe she had carved and not specifically by the modernist style that roots it. |  |
 |
Of course, drawing clear aesthetic precedence from buildings, chairs or cutlery to pipes is rather less exact. Still, some of the same overriding ideas are shared. The bold, clean lines that were so important to the modernists of the 1950s and 1960s (such as Jacobsen, but also architect Mies van der Rohe and many others) are central to Nanna’s pipe aesthetic. The arcing bisecting line that dominates so many of her compositions is a perfect example of this. The essence of the shape is reduced to one very simple, but very beautiful curve and the rest of the pipe is conceived around that curve. There’s asymmetry present in all of the pipes that share this element, but it is a very carefully grounded and restrained asymmetry. Indeed, there’s a minimalist simplicity to the idea, though the resulting pipe may not, itself, be minimalist. By reducing the overarching theme of the pipe and then emphasizing it in a single line (almost evoking the way a modernist architect might incorporate visible steel girders), Nanna seems to be saying that this complex form, constructed from two or three materials, is, at root, stylistically extremely simple. And while this is but one example, similar conclusions could be drawn from other ideas and shapes. | |
Though Nanna's creative engagement with Danish Modern design cannot be overstated, she is also very much the daughter and granddaughter of Lars and Sixten, both of whom developed their own, unique responses to these stylistic ideas. Their ideas are also prevalent in her work-- one need do no more than lay out pipes from Lars and Nanna to see the striking familial resemblance. But, Nanna's work is tighter and less organic, more conscious of design, than that of her father. Though similar, her work leans towards the designed, whereas her father's leans towards the natural. So, while the legacy is very much upheld, Nanna's work also reflects her own design conceptions, as informed, to a great degree, by that design career that she left to return to pipe making.
So, Nanna finds herself in a very special position, both artistically and, over a longer term, professionally. She’s synthesizing the aesthetic ideas that her grandfather created and her father extended with the artistic and design movements that, to a great degree, spawned those ideas to begin with. As heir to the Sixten legacy, she’s uniquely position to extend and further those ideas and, simultaneously, extend and develop her own aesthetic contributions to that legacy. What’s more, she will be able to disseminate those ideas, which is perhaps the greatest achievement of all.
|  |
|
