Refbjerg

Refbjerg is a pipe brand bearing the name of Danish maker Søren Refbjerg Rasmussen. Born in 1943 in Søborg, north of Copenhagen, and spending nearly his entire life in the same town, Rasmussen founded his own company in 1969 and moved into full-time pipe making. Over more than fifty years, the brand showed two distinct faces: first a fast-producing small factory, then a one-man, highly selective workshop.

The Factory Years

In the 1970s the workshop employed an average of eight to twelve craftsmen. The bulk of production consisted of semi-freehand bodies standing between classic patterns and full freehand; these were sold not under his surname but under his first name, as the "Søren" brand. By the records, total sales exceeded one million pipes. In this period Rasmussen finished by his own hand only the bodies he judged best, leaving the rest to his team. That a workshop bearing the maker's name operated with a sizable crew was no exception in the Denmark of the period; the Preben Holm and Karl Erik workshops were founded at a similar scale. The workshop also produced for W.Ø. Larsen for many years under that name. In this form the brand sits within the broad-based, export-oriented wing of the Danish School.

Second-quality bodies went to market under separate names. The best known of these are the Danbark and Soborg stamps, the latter taking the name of the town where the maker lived. The Danbark series was revived years later, though on a far smaller scale.