The Great Danes

When I look at a raw block, I’m looking for the grain. There are two "holy grails" in my world: Straight Grain and Birdseye. Straight grain looks like thin, elegant pinstripes running up the bowl. Birdseye is what happens when you cut across those grains—it looks like thousands of tiny, swirling eyes. The Danish school taught us that the shape of the pipe should be dictated by these lines. If the grain is slanted, the pipe should be slanted. You don’t fight the wood; you collaborate with it. Here are a few people who have shaped the way I see Danish Pipemaking, and how it has influenced my own taste in pipes.

The Godfather: Sixten Ivarsson

You can’t even pick up a file without acknowledging Sixten Ivarsson. The funny thing is, the man was actually Swedish, but he basically built the Copenhagen scene with his own two hands. Before Sixten, pipes were stiff. They were industrial—think of the old British "Billiard" shapes that looked like they came off an assembly line.

Sixten was the guy who looked at a block and said, "Why are we forcing this wood to be a perfect circle? Why can’t it be a triangle? Why can’t it look like an acorn?" He was an architect of the organic. He’s the reason "Freehand" is a thing. He’s the guy who looked at a flaw—a sand pit or a crack—and instead of tossing the wood, he’d carve around it, creating a shape nobody had ever seen before. He invented the "Pea" and the "Nefertiti." He was the first to really make bamboo work as a shank, bridging the gap between natural materials. He taught us that the wood is the boss, and if the wood has a "mistake," you turn that mistake into a feature.

The Pure Artist: Anne Julie

Then you have Anne Julie. She’s a force of nature. She took over her husband Poul Rasmussen’s shop after he passed, and she didn't just maintain the status quo—she blew the doors off the place. She’s a painter, and you can see it in her pipes. They’re floral, graceful, and incredibly organic.

Whenever I get too stuck in the "technical" side of things—worrying about millimeters and airflow—I think of her pipes.

The Perfectionists: Lars Ivarsson and Jess Chonowitsch

If Sixten was the guy who started the fire, his son Lars and the legendary Jess Chonowitsch were the ones who harnessed it into something sharp and perfect.

Lars was a genius. He came up with the "Blowfish" shape. If you’ve never tried to carve one, let me tell you: it’s a nightmare. You have to align the birdseye grain perfectly on the flat sides of the bowl while keeping the straight grain running along the "ridge" of the pipe. It’s a feat of three-dimensional geometry that makes my head spin. I’ve ruined more blocks trying to mimic Lars than I care to admit.

And Jess? Jess is the gold standard for what we call "fit and finish." His pipes are so precise they almost look like they were grown in a lab, but they still have that human warmth. The way his stems meet the wood is legendary. If I can get my stem-to-shank transition even 10% as seamless as a Chonowitsch, I’ve had a productive month. When you hold a Chonowitsch, you realize that "good enough" is a sin.

The Modern Master: Tom Eltang

Finally, there’s Tom Eltang. If you see a pipe with a "Golden Contrast" stain—where the grain pops in high-definition blacks and yellows—that’s Tom’s DNA right there. He’s been doing this since he was 16.

They call him a "human machine" because he’s incredibly fast, but he doesn't sacrifice a lick of quality. He’s got this signature "Rustication" that looks like rough, jagged rock but feels like smooth silk when you hold it.

The Reality of the Shop

It’s not all philosophy and "listening to the wood," though. Most of my day is spent in the unglamorous trenches. I spend hours hand-sanding with progressively finer grits—400, 600, 800, 1200. My fingers are permanently stained with leather dye. I’ve got calluses in places I didn’t know you could get them.

There’s the engineering side, too. A pipe can be the most beautiful sculpture in the world, but if it doesn't smoke well, it’s just a paperweight. You have to drill the draft hole so it hits the bottom of the bowl perfectly. You have to taper the airway inside the stem so the smoke doesn't "tumble" and get hot. It’s a balance of aesthetics and fluid dynamics.

And then there’s the heartbreak. You can be 95% finished with a pipe—hours of work, a beautiful shape, perfect grain—and you hit a "void" or a crack hidden deep in the wood. In that moment, you have a choice. You can try to hide it, or you can do the Danish thing: you adapt. You carve deeper. You change the line. You let the wood win.

Why I Do It

So, I’m not Danish. My ancestors probably wouldn't know a briar burl from a turnip. But when I’m in my shop, covered in dust and trying to figure out why a particular piece of wood won't cooperate, I’m trying to follow that same Danish philosophy: Respect the wood, follow the grain, and never, ever make a boring pipe.