Svenska Rökpipfabriken

Svenska Rökpipfabriken is a family business founded in 1931 in Lerum, near Gothenburg, regarded as Sweden's first briar pipe factory. Its name means "Swedish Pipe Factory" and it appears mostly under the abbreviation SRF on products and in trade records. For a long stretch after its founding it is also cited as the country's only briar pipe factory.

Since the rest of Swedish pipemaking relied largely on small workshops and one-man signatures such as Björn of Sweden, SRF represents almost the entirety of the country's mass production.

The Eliason Family and Scale

The factory was founded by father and son Hjalmar and Gösta Eliason. Hjalmar had a long background in the tobacco industry behind him; according to records he had served as general manager of Ystads Nya Tobaksfabrik and Tobaksfabrik AB Göta. Gösta, after training in woodworking, learned pipemaking by working for a year at a factory in the Swiss village of Kleinlützel. The division of labor was clear from the start: Gösta ran production, while Hjalmar handled wholesaler and dealer relations until his retirement in the early 1940s.

The scale never grew large. The business opened with the founding pair and two employees; in later years the staff fluctuated between four and fifteen. Although it carried the name "factory," this made SRF closer in size to a sizeable workshop than to French or English mass producers.