Thurmann Piber

Thurmann Piber is the brand of the workshop that Danish pipe maker Bjørn Thurmann founded under his own name in 1976. Thurmann is known in the community not only for his pipes but as the author of a handbook that brought pipe making down to the home workbench. The workshop first operated in Copenhagen, then after 2005 moved to the town of Svaneke on the Baltic island of Bornholm.

From Shop Counter to Workbench

For Thurmann, born in 1946, the trade began with the pipe shop his family opened in central Copenhagen in 1953. Taking his place behind the counter at a young age, his first job was sorting and grading the pipes to be sold. In the early years the shop's stock came from the Copenhagen house of Larsen & Stigart. The family later decided to make its own pipes, and in 1968 set up its workshop in North Jutland, where experienced pipe workers could be found.

That same year brought Thurmann an entirely different kind of training: working in a series of tobacconist shops in London. This apprenticeship period ended at the Dunhill shop on Duke Street. Shortly after returning to Denmark, he received a call from Iwan Ries & Co. in Chicago; between 1969 and 1970 he served on the eighteen-person sales staff of what was then considered the largest tobacconist shop of its day. His years in London and Chicago gave him an unusually international perspective for a maker raised within the Danish school.