Bari

Bari is a pipe brand founded by Viggo Nielsen in the Danish city of Kolding, which carried on mid-scale series production for more than forty years. The brand sits somewhere between the country's large factories and one-man benches: it followed a production line that combined machine speed with hand finishing, playing for consistency rather than showmanship. Sources disagree on the founding year: Danish records give 1948, while Pipedia gives the winter of 1950-51.

The Kolding Years

Kolding, where Bari was founded, was one of the cities where the pipe trade was concentrated in postwar Denmark; alongside names such as Kriswill, more than a hundred people are said to have made their living from the trade there. Viggo Nielsen's two sons, Kai Nielsen and Jørgen Nielsen, entered the workshop while still children and worked there until 1975. After the brothers left that year, they began making their own pipes together with their father in Faaborg, on the island of Funen; these pipes are known in Denmark under the name Faaborg.

In terms of production philosophy, Bari is counted among the brands that adapted early to the modern Danish design language maturing around Stanwell. Its reinterpretation of free-flowing shapes within the limits of molded production keeps the brand, even if only at the edges, within the discussion of the Danish School.