Former: Smooth Billiard with Bamboo Tobacco Pipe

Danish carver Hans "Former" Nielsen is a venerated master of the craft, with 60 years of pipe-making experience. Like many pipe makers of his generation, he learned and worked in the prestigious W.Ø. Larsen workshop. He quickly advanced to management before traveling to Germany to establish and supervise a factory there. Afterwards, he returned to Denmark and began making pipes under his own name from his home studio. His work is defined by sleek, graceful line work, a keen sense for balance, and a stunning attention to detail, as evidenced by this straight Billiard design.

A sleek, lightweight design, this piece pairs a tall, curvaceous bowl to an arrow-straight shank-and-stem arrangement. In typical Danish fashion, the bowl tapers from the plump heel towards the rim, while the cheeked transition accentuates rounded features of the bowl's base. The abbreviated shank is extended by two knuckles of bamboo, each knuckle perfectly spaced to mirror the transition and shoulders of the saddle stem, maintaining an elegant sense of rhythm between bowl, shank, and stem. The warm, vibrant color of the bamboo lightens the overall composition and lends the design a sense of naturalism in profile. The stummel wears a beautiful, contrast-stained smooth finish that showcases impeccable strands of flame grain that flow from the birdseye-adorned heel to the birdseye-adorned rim on either flank of the bowl. It's a stylish, charming design that perfectly embodies the Danish tradition of the pipe making, and from a legend that helped bring that school of design to the world stage, no less.