Well, since Erik was born in 1949 we can hardly call him new but his carreer as pipemaker isn't that long.

Erik comes from a family of pipe smokers and collectors and he owns more than 300 pipes himself. And like most of us collectors he had thought about making a few pipes of his own which is why he bought some blocks and simple equipment in year 2000. And the following week his life changed completely when he had a bad accident at his job at DSB, the Danish Railroads. Erik had to quit his job and suffered both physical and mental problems after the accident. He simply couldn't accept that he wasn't needed anymore.

But slowly he started making pipes in his workshop and it was a great therapy for him. Obviously he thought that his pipes were fantastic and obviously they weren't... But one day he met the great pipemaker Kurt Balleby who invited Erik to visit his workshop. The 2 guys enjoyed each others company and with the help of the social security it became possible for Kurt Balleby to hire Erik as an apprentice for 18 months.

At the end of 2002, Kurt thought that Erik's work was good enough to match that of other pipemakers and suggested that Erik joined him to the Chicago Show 2003, the World's largest pipe show. Even though the thought of competing against the best pipemakers in the World, Erik decided to go. And it was a an immediate success since his 18 pipes sold already the first day of the show.

Since then he has distributors both in the US and in Germany and is slowly getting into the Asian market as well.

Erik likes the classical pipeshapes. Of course he was strongly influenced by Balleby's shapes in the beginning but today he has found his own way of giving classical shapes a 'touch of Erik'. And recently he has worked on some very asymetrical shapes of his own so we definately haven't seen all of his potential yet.

We are proud to present Erik Nielsen's pipes here and hope you'll enjoy them as much as we do