Pipe Making in Sweden

Pipe making in Sweden is a tradition that has stayed in the shadow of neighboring Denmark, small in number but technically highly ambitious. The country's factory era was short-lived; it was really the reputation earned by a handful of solo craftsmen at the end of the twentieth century that made the name known.

The Factory Era

Sweden's first briar pipe factory was founded in 1931 in Lerum, near Gothenburg. The firm, known by the short name Svenska Rökpipfabriken (SRF), was in the hands of the Eliason family; some records credit the founding to father and son Hjalmar and Gösta Eliason together, others to Gösta alone. Gösta, who ran production, had learned the craft during a year's apprenticeship at a factory in Switzerland; according to records he was only nineteen when he took charge of the operation. The factory sourced its briar burl first from Algeria and Corsica, and in later years largely from Spain. When briar supplies became difficult during the Second World War, pear wood was used instead. Production ended in 1979 when Gösta retired; some records state the company changed hands that year and stayed in operation for a few more years.

The country's largest pipe facility was Skandinaviska Pipfabriken (SKAPI), founded in Uddevalla in 1936. Max D. Schwab came from a family that had made pipes in Cologne for two generations; after leaving 1930s Germany and settling in Sweden, he started production in a modest basement workshop that grew quickly, with the new factory building completed in 1946. The plant ceased operating in the late 1960s. Reliable information is scarce on Skånska Pipfabriken, associated with Hyllstofta in the Skåne region; it appears to have been founded before the war and never to have resumed production afterward.