Bård Hansen (Tabago)

Bård Hansen is a maker producing handmade pipes under the name Tabago in Bergen, Norway. Starting roughly twenty years after factory production in the country had ended, and working on a bench that came directly from the old pipe factory in Lillehammer, set his workshop apart as one continuing a line of Norwegian pipemaking that had otherwise broken off. Throughout the 2000s, the Norwegian press regularly referred to him as "the country's only professional pipemaker."

The Bench From Lillehammer

Series pipe production in Norway had for many years been concentrated at a single address: G. Larsens Pipefabrikk in Lillehammer. The firm, founded in 1844 by turner Guldbrand Larsen (1815-1902), first made meerschaum pipes, shifted its weight toward briar after the 1860s, and sold its products under the name Mesnapipen. The factory closed in 1979; the brand was sold abroad in 1984 and was, by the 2000s, being made by the Danish firm Stanwell.

At the time of the closure, Hans Tandberg, one of the makers who had worked there for many years, bought the factory's machines and material stock and carried on production on his own. By the account given, Hansen went to Lillehammer in 1999 and there met Tandberg, who was preparing to retire; he took over the bench, with the handover made conditional on the buyer also becoming the maker's student. This gave Hansen both a working workshop and years of accumulated briar and ebonite stock. Ebonite remains today the most widely used of mouthpiece materials.