Hedelson (Glen Hedelson)

Hedelson is a pipe stamp carrying the name of American cutter Glen Hedelson. Behind it lies no independent company or workshop of the maker's own founding; the name was used in the 1970s to distinguish pieces coming from Hedelson's hand at the studios run by Michael Kabik. For this reason Hedelson-stamped pipes are considered to have come off the same bench, by the same method, as the Sven-Lar and Wenhall series of the same years.

The Virginia Beach Years

The story begins in Virginia Beach. Mel Baker, owner of the tobacco chain Tobak Ltd., had called Kabik to the city in 1973 and had him set up a freehand line under the Sven-Lar brand. Once one of the country's major import distributors, Associated Imports, got involved, order volume grew quickly and the workshop could no longer make do with a single cutter. The cutter is the person who shapes the briar block on a spinning sanding disc and gives the pipe its final form; on a freehand line, the bulk of the design burden falls on their shoulders. Hedelson was hired as this second cutter, according to Kabik's account, through a job program set up for navy personnel finishing their service, and learned the craft at the bench.

What was truly unusual for a series-production studio was that the pipes carried the cutter's name rather than the company's. It is from this practice that the name Hedelson later came to be regarded as a brand in its own right. With the crew expanded, weekly output roughly doubled; according to the figures Kabik gave, around two hundred pipes and about twenty pipe sets a week.