Preben Holm

Preben Holm (1947-1989) was a Danish pipe maker. In the first generation of the Danish school, shape remained a measured interpretation of the classic patterns, but Holm stepped outside that boundary and popularized large, showy pipes that followed the grain of the wood. Standing at the head of a forty-five-person production operation at twenty-two, and the attention his pipes drew in America, quickly made him one of the most talked-about names in his country.

Beginnings in Copenhagen

Holm's first contact with the pipe came from behind a counter: he started out doing odd jobs at his father's shop in Copenhagen, and by the age of fourteen was effectively running the pipe and tobacco department's purchasing himself. With the tips he saved up he acquired his first workbench and his own tools; his workshop was a room of a few square meters in his father's basement. By his own account, he handed his first pipes over to his father's shop on 5 June 1963, eleven days before his sixteenth birthday. He then applied to the city's tourist-known Pipe-Dan shop, which agreed to take twenty to thirty pipes a week, though pricing authority stayed with the shop. At eighteen he hired his first journeyman; when keeping the business afloat became difficult during his military service he was forced to let him go, and it was only after his discharge that he turned production into a regular enterprise.