William's Estate Briar Pipes
Celius started around 1959/60 at Suhr's Pibemageri in Copenhagen, where he learned the craft of pipemaking from Poul Rasmussen (†), but presumeably even more from Sven Knudsen, Rasmussen's foreman. Young Celius was obviously a bright boy being one of the very first Danes who sensed the beginning boom for Danish fancy pipes looming first of all in the huge US market. And so he went off for self-employment founding a pipe manufacture in the former dairy building of Bogø By on the small island Bogø in 1963.
So he definitely improved the shining hour, because he was one of the first, who was able to supply these innovative Danish freehands in considerable large numbers to the States. Smaller quantities went to Germany. Here however he didn't become as famous as in the USA, where especially his better pieces gained cult status. In other respects Celius' business developed well, too. For instance he was contracted by W.Ø. Larsen of Copenhagen to supply pipes as Hans Jonny Nielsen (→ Former), at that time master of Larsen's workshop, confirmed. Anyhow, in it's best times Celius’ manufacture employed close to 20 co-workers.
Chess line: the most important group of Celius pipes. The grading of these typical Danish freehands is borrowed from the chess pieces: Pawn (sand-blasted), Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen to King. Pipes, where the natural bark of the briar was left at the rim of the bowl, were called and additionally stamped "Root". Furthermore these pipes had numbers from 1 to 31 (as far as known today). The numbers, we can take that for certain, denominate the shape. But please note that they surely have not the same binding character as the shape numbers of other manufacturers-- they rather stand for a basic form, that was modified often.
See more:
