The truth about Stanwell Danish Star Pipes is elusive. If I was to have a nightmare about pipes, it would be me sitting at a table and a famous carver, like Sixteen Ivarsson, sitting there yelling, “You can’t handle the truth!” like Jack Nicholson did in “A Few Good Men.”
Take, for example, the three Danish Star pipes I just finished cleaning for resell. According to the shape chart I located on pipedia.com (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Stanwell_Shape_Numbers_and_Designers), all three were shapes created by Sixteen Ivarsson – created, not carved. With the exception of the individual pipes he carved and handed to Poul Nielsen, Ivarsson may not have carved another of these shapes.
Sixteen Ivarsson and Stanwell
Again, according to pipedia.com and other sources, Ivarsson lived in Denmark during World War II. When his pipe stem broke, Ivarsson went to Suhr’s Pibereparation to get it repaired and wound up working as a repairman. Story is, he also starting carving pipes and soon became locally known as a pipe carver. Then, Nielsen, who was managing (or owner of) Kyringe (another wood working factory) visited Suhr, he became enamored with the pipe shapes being carved by Ivarsson. This led to Ivarsson creating pipe shapes for Nielsen. Nielsen changed the name of his factory to Stanwell (and later changed his name to Stanwell, as well). That cooperation between Ivarsson and Stanwell lasted for decades.
The problem, for me so far, is that I haven’t been able to pinpoint the date when Stanwell created its Danish Star line of pipes or when the dropped the line. Ivarsson died in 2001 and that meant no new shapes were possible from him, but that doesn’t mean Stanwell had to stop using those shapes.
Danish Star Pipes
I’m making a supposition here (a pure guess, is more like it), but I think the Danish Star pipes were above average in quality – not a mid-range pipe, but not a top line pipe for Stanwell either. The pipe shapes were created by legendary carvers like Ivarsson, Anne Julie and Tom Eltang. (Anne Julie, by the way, was the wife of Poul Rasmussen. She started carving pipes are Rasmussen died at the age of 47). To me, it looks like Stanwell wanted to capitalize on the name of the carvers who created the shapes.
The Danish Star 30 and 127 are smaller pipes with thinner stems. The 30 is a
strawberry shape, bent pipe. The Stanwell logo is present on both stems, but the white paint is missing.
A “strongly bent” pipe, the 127 shank is more than 3/4-bent. A little more bend and it would be close to an Oom Paul shape. While some consider the bowl as “egg shape”, I think it is closer to an acorn shape.
My favorite shape of the three, is the Danish Star 124. The bowl is a freehand but looks like an egg. What grabs my attention is the long, conical shape of the shank and the short saddle stem. I see an elegance about this pipe.
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© J. Gibson Creative Services. March 3, 2020
