Holm, Preben: Difference between revisions

One day while making the rather traditional hand-carved pipes as we had to in order to come by some money, I took a fancy to make something completely untraditional at that time. From the very beginning I had only worked with the finest Bruyere that could be provided, and on the whole it all had very pretty grain patterns, and that gave me the idea to try something novel. Contrary to what was done so far I started to form some of the pipes according to the grain pattern, and out of this I got some quite particular models. Thus having experimented a little while I had a very smart specimen, at least I thought so. At that time I received about 30,00kr. for a pipe from Pipe-Dan, and I remember that I first went and showed my father this special pipe. He was very impressed, but when I told him that I wanted to go to Pipe-Dan and ask 500,00 kr. for it he seemed not really to believe me. Anyway, I did it. Pipe-Dan studied the pipe and said. "By Jove, it is nice to see something novel". He paid the 500,00 kr. and told me that I was welcome to make some more of them. However, there was naturally a limited market for pipes at such a price, and it was not long before he could not buy any more of them. Anyway, I continued to make them in addition to the ordinary hand-carved ones. I began also to let the raw bark-top be part of the design.

I then got the idea that it would be fun to see where all the pipes were sold, and therefore I decided to travel to St. Thomas. St.Thomas is indeed a tourist island, visited by tourists from all over America, and it was these tourists who bought my pipes in Lon Schwartz' shop. During my first visit I stayed in the shop for 2-3 weeks and had ample opportunities of talking with pipe-smokers from everywhere in America. That really gave me a lot of impulse. Then I returned home and continued working with the new inspiration. That was repeated 3 times within the first year's cooperation with Lon. I could simply not have had any better starting point, because the taste changes quite a lot from one place in the U.S.A. to another, but here came, as mentioned, pipe-smokers from all the States. It was wonderful to feel how something one oneself enjoyed making really was accepted.  

Lon Schwartz still wanted to buy all the pipes I could make, and new markets began to be added. Japan was the next one. People there seemed to be more interested in the design and the quality of the Bruyere than in the price. Due to my always being very careful with the purchase of raw material and only accepting the very best, no matter what is the price, we very quickly acquired a very good market in Japan. Very soon new markets turned up, among others most countries in Europe showed great interest, and we once more increased the production.