Ib Olsen

Ib Olsen is a Danish pipe maker who worked at the S. Bang workshop during the period Svend Bang ran it. The most visible proof of his craftsmanship is that the pipes to come from his hand were stamped not with the workshop's brand but with his own name.

His name appears rarely in the literature of the Danish school; most of what is known about him has likewise been passed down through the makers who shared the same bench. Because some records do not agree with one another, caution is needed on the details.

At the S. Bang Bench

Since the Copenhagen workshop's founder was not himself a carver, it ran from the start on makers brought in from outside. Records show that Olsen was on this roster in the same years as Per Hansen, Ulf Noltensmeier, and Ph. Vigen, who would later be known under his own signature. The workshop's working order was based on each maker carrying a pipe through alone from the first cut to the final polish. This order made it possible to distinguish makers' hands from one another even under a single brand stamp; Olsen's case can be counted as the most extreme example of that distinction. The workshop's preference for turning out only a small number of pipes a year also left each maker time to develop his own line; that a maker's hand rather than his name comes to the fore in the Danish school's high-grade thinking is a result of this way of working.