Former: Smooth Apple with Ivorite Tobacco Pipe

Hans "Former" Nielsen brings decades of pipe-making experience to his craft. He's devoted himself to pipes for the majority of his life, learning elements of design and engineering from repairing and restoring before working for the famed W.Ø. Larsen workshop. Former soon advanced to managing W.Ø. Larsen but then left for Germany to establish and supervise a factory there. Afterward, he returned to Denmark, and has been carving handmade pipes in his home studio ever since. Every pipe he fashions embodies his traditional Danish style, honed craftsmanship, and expert finishes, but it's for his Apple renditions that he's most recognized. It's a shape he's carved numerous times and one that he readily experiments with, riffing on various iterations while still revealing his personal aesthetic.

His workhorse, rusticated Apples are among his most prolific versions, but this smooth example is a singular piece. Distinctly chubby and soft-lined, this pipe exemplifies the Danish design tradition with myriad curves, elegant balance, and a minimalist demeanor. Though compact, it's among Former's most muscular iterations, the shank and bowl equal in their comparative stoutness for a substantially robust aesthetic throughout the entire composition. Beautifully balanced, though hearty, the bowl cants slightly forward, and the walls taper toward a softly inflated rim — a common design cue among Danish artisan pipe makers. As such, the rim maintains the rest of the stummel's soft lines instead of being completely flat or chamfered for stark, angular contrast.

The lines of the shank continue toward the stem through a hearty section of Ivorite, the face gently rounded, again, to maintain the gentle aesthetic that defines the stummel. The saddle stem, then, offers the only hint of contrasting firmness in its base's expansion disk, but even that is rounded along the edges more so than would be customary, keeping in line with stummel's shaping before dropping suddenly into the rest of the hand-cut mouthpiece's slender stance. Dressed in a rich, auburn contrast stain, the briar reveals stunning flame grain all around, with birdseye bespeckling the underside. It's a piece that's iconically "Former" and perfect for those who appreciate hearty Danish classics and artisan quality.