Skovgaard

Skovgaard is the name of the pipes stamped under his own name by Danish pipe maker Lasse Skovgaard Jørgensen. Born in 1983, the maker works in the southern part of the island of Sjælland. His reputation spread beyond Denmark's borders fairly quickly, thanks in part to his apprenticeship years at his father's workshop and to the factory discipline he gained at one of the country's long-established pipe firms.

An Apprentice Trained at Larsen's Bench

His father, Benni Jørgensen, is also a pipe maker, and Lasse's first contact with the craft was established at this workshop. His entry into the trade, however, came not through pipes but through accessories: at sixteen, he was carving tobacco tampers from buffalo horn for W.Ø. Larsen. By eighteen he was working on the same firm's "select" and two-tone lines; at nineteen he was assigned to what is considered Larsen's most demanding work, the making of straight-grain pipes. Having practiced, while still in high school, on a production line regarded as a benchmark of Danish pipe making is considered the source of the technical confidence in the master's later work.