Ludwig Lorenz

Ludwig Lorenz is the current name of a pipemaking tradition that has run for three generations in Austria's Tyrol region. The family's start in pipe production dates to 1886, and its present workshop is in the village of Götzens, a few kilometers from Innsbruck.

The brand is not a mass-production factory but a one-person handmade workshop turning out a few hundred pieces a year; in Austrian trade records it appears under the name "Pfeifendesign Lorenz," with the occupation listed as pipemaker (Pfeifenschneider).

Three Generations of Family Tradition

Records indicate the family's first generation began making pipes in 1886. Credit for the business taking its present form, though, belongs mainly to second-generation Karl Lorenz: after the Second World War he opened a pipe shop in Innsbruck and ran both the production and sales side over a career spanning nearly sixty years. Born in 1963, Ludwig Lorenz entered the trade not straight from the pipe lathe but through an apprenticeship in wood sculpture, earning his master craftsman's certificate in that field; he learned the finer points of pipemaking at his father's side. He founded his own business in 1985 and ran the Innsbruck shop he inherited from his father until 2004. Since then he has carried on his work at his workshop in Götzens.