by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the worktable is an interesting W.O. Larsen pipe. It is a Danish take on a sandblast straight Rhodesian. I am pretty sure it was made after Stanwell purchased Larsen. We picked it up from a seller in Denmark on 05/22/2024. It is stamped on the topside of the shank and reads FM 2002 [over] Double Black. On the underside it is stamped with a shape number 86 or 68 [over] W.O. Larsen [over] Made in Denmark. All the stamping is on the smooth band of briar on the shank end. The bowl has a thick cake and there is lava in the sandblast on the rim top. The twin rings around the bowl cap are in good condition and look clean. The sandblast is dirty but the finish is in excellent condition underneath the grime. The mouthpiece is an acrylic fancy oval saddle stem. There are tooth marks and chatter on both sides on the button and ahead of it. It is a great looking pipe. Jeff took some photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it. Jeff took photos of the rim top and the stem to show the condition of the pipe when we received it. You can see the cake in the bowl and the lava in the sandblast on the rim top. It is hard to know the condition of the rim edges with certainty until the pipe is clean. The stem is acrylic and has a lot of chatter and a few deep tooth marks on both sides near the button and on the button surface itself. He took photos of the sides of the bowl and the heel to give an idea of the shape, the sandblast and the condition of the briar around the bowl. It really is a nicely shaped pipe that has charm and elegance. The next photos Jeff took show the stamping around the smooth briar on the shank end. It is clear and readable as noted above.I refreshed my memory about the pipes coming out of Ole Larsen’s Copenhagen tobacco shop. I knew that many famous Danish Carvers started their careers carving for the shop. I turned first to the Pipephil website to get and over view of the brand (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-l2.html). I did a screen capture of the section on the site showing a summary of the brand and the typical stamping. I quote from the sidebar information on Pipephil below.

In the 1960s Ole Larsen, owner of the Copenhagen tobacco store, retails pipes carved by Sixten Ivarsson, Poul Rasmussen, Sven Knudsen or Peter Brakner. Faced with the success and urged by Sven Bang (store manager), Sven Knudsen and Former (Hans Nielsen) are successively hired to carve pipes in the basement of the shop at the beginning and in the old Larsen cigar factory afterwards. Carver like Teddy Knudsen, Tonni Nielsen, Jess Chonowitch, Peter Hedegaard work a while in this context.

When Nils, son of Ole Larsen, succeeds his father he acquires the Georg Jensen pipe factory to focus on less expensive pipes. This turns out to be an error ending with the sale of W.O. Larsen trademark to Stanwell.

The famous tobacco shop at Strøget, Amagertorv 9 closed down for good on Dec 31, 2004.
Do not confuse W.O. Larsen with: Jorgen Larsen

This leads me to believe that the pipe I am working on came after Stanwell purchased the trademark. However, the RM2002 stamp on the pipe tells me that it was made in 2002 for the Roskilde Championship in Denmark (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Stanwell the Stanwell article explains these markings in a section called Competition Markings///). To me this is another reason I put the pipe post Stanwell’s acquisition of the brand. Stanwell did many pipe for the various shop competitions in Denmark. This is stamped the same way as the Stanwell’s that I have worked on from these competitions.

I then turned to Pipedia to do a bit more reading about the brand and the various lines making it up (https://pipedia.org/wiki/W.%C3%98._Larsen). The link took me to some pages on the finepipes.com website. Here is the link to the summary of the history of the brand. I quote it in full. I have marked the pertinent section with bold underlined font to mark out the section on the Stanwell/Larsen connection (https://www.finepipes.com/pipes/danish/w-o-larsen?sort=20a&page=2&zenid=562ff4b9d62f4f612d0f6ee60cab1224).

W.O. Larsen was one of the most famous tobacco shops in Copenhagen, with a beautiful store located on Copenhagen’s famous “Walking Street.” During the flowering of the Danish pipe in the ’60’s, they first began retailing pipes by such carvers as Sixten Ivarsson, Sven Knudsen, Poul Rasmussen, and Brakner. Urged on by his store manager Sven Bang, the owner, Ole Larsen, decided to begin making pipes in the basement of the shop. He first hired Sven Knudsen as the pipe maker, who soon passed the job to his protégé Hans “Former” Nielsen. Larsen’s fortunes rose along with the rest of the Danish pipe business, and Former was soon managing a group of carvers in the old Larsen cigar factory. Among these were Teddy Knudsen, Tonni Nielsen, Jess Chonowitch, Peter Hedegaard and others, who were responsible for the Select and Straight Grain series before they branched out on their own. After Former left to start Bentley pipes in Switzerland, his duties were taken over by Soren Refbjerg Rasmussen, while the straight grains were made by Teddy’s student Benni Jorgenson. As Ole’s health began to fail, the reins were taken over by his son Nils. Nils became convinced that the way for Larsen to prosper was by entering the low-end market, and acquired the Georg Jensen pipe factory to make an array of less expensive pipes. This turned out to be a fatal error, and Larsen was recently sold to Stanwell, who continue to produce so-called “Larsen” pipes in their huge factory. Thus ended an important part of Danish pipe history.

From all of that information I had learned that the pipe was a Danish Made pipe from the days after Stanwell acquired the Larsen trademark. It was made with a finish they called the Double Black. The 2002 date is two years before the closing of the Larsen Pipe Shop. Now it was time to work on the pipe.

I have to say I was really looking forward to seeing what Jeff had done to this Danish Made W.O. Larsen Double Black pipe when I took it out of the box. It had shown such beauty through the grime so I was quite sure it would be stunning. He reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and cleaned the remnants of cake back with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime and oils. He cleaned the internals of the shank and stem with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove all of the tars and oils there. He scrubbed the exterior of the stem with Soft Scrub. He rinsed off the cleaner with warm water and wiped the bowl and stem down with a light coat of olive oil to rehydrate both. The pipe really was quite stunning. I took close up photos of the stem and the rim top to show both how clean they were and what needed to be addresses with both. The bowl had some debris and lava still in the sandblast on the rim top. The edges of the bowl looked very good. The stem looked better but the tooth marks and chatter were still present. I would need to remove those to bring the stem back. I removed the stem from the bowl and took a photo of the parts to give a sense of the beauty of the pipe. I worked over the rim top with a brass bristle wire brush to knock the remaining debris out of the sandblast. It looked much better once I had finished.I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my finger tips and a horse hair shoe brush to get into the twin rings around the bowl cap and the crevices of the sandblast. The product is incredible and the way it brings the grain to the fore is unique. It works to clean, protect and invigorate the wood. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I filled in the deep tooth marks on the button with black CA glue. Once it cured, I reshaped the button edge and top with a folded piece 220 grit sandpaper and sanded out the chatter and marks on both sides of the stem surface to blend them into the acrylic surface.I started polishing the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. Each pad smoothed the surface with increasing polish. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil to remove the debris and give the stem a shine.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-12000 pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each pad to protect it and preserve it. I polished it with Before After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I finished the polishing with a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I am really happy with the way that this W.O. Larsen Double Black RM 2002 Rhodesian turned out. It really is a beautiful looking pipe with a great shape and sandblast. The acrylic saddle stem is really nice and really works with the smooth briar band on the shank end. The blast really came alive with the buffing. The rich black stains of the finish gave the pipe a sense of depth with the polishing and waxing. I put the acrylic stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished W.O. Larsen Rhodesian RM2002 really is a beauty and feels great in the hand and looks very good. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 46 grams/1.62 ounces. The pipe will be going on the rebornpipes store soon. It will be in the section on Danish Pipe Makers if you would like to add it to your collection. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. It was a fun one to work on!