The cover shows a pipe made by Anne Julie, the grand old lady of Danish pipe-making. We will tell more about her in a future issue, but for now you have to be content with this piece of art.

The Pipe Club of Sweden is now celebrating its first 20 years and we wanted to celebrate that in a special way. So at the end of March nine Swedish pipemakers gathered in the workshop of Vollmer & Nilsson with the aim to make a pipe together, a very special pipe—a Jubilee pipe for our club. The result may be seen in this issue but in August a Jubilee magazine will be published, showing step by step how this pipe came true. The pipemakers also made a stand for the pipe and a tamper. All of it will be sold later this year and further information on that will be published in said Jubilee publication and here at our site.

Earlier this year Tom Eltang was visited by the Japanese pipemaker Kei Gotoh. The visit lasted for 10 days and those days were filled with work. Some of the nine pipes they made are shown in this issue and they are really pieces of art.

We introduce a new headline called “Antikhörnan” (The Antique Corner). One of our members, who is a serious collector of antique pipes, tells about a few pipes in his collection. Hopefully this will be a standing headline in future issues.

Our club has taken part in most international competitions in pipe-smoking, arranged each year by the CIPC. The success has mostly been moderate, but the pipemakers Vollmer & Nilsson thought that the best Swede, despite that, deserves a reward of some kind. So they founded the V&N challenge prize. The first to receive the prize was Greger Risberg, who was the best Swede in the World Championship in Portugal last year.

The Danish Championship took place last March and we show some pictures from the event  and the results for the Swedish participants.

The Tobacco & Match Museum in Stockholm has got a unique donation of clay pipes. Some of these pipes come from the ship St. Mikael, which was wrecked in 1747 on its way from Amsterdam to St. Peterburg. The wreck was found in 1953 and several dives took place during the following decades.

We have also visited the pipemaker Bjørn Thurmann on the isle of Bornholm and tell the story about his long life in the trade. Of course we also show some of his pipes.

We also gladly present some news from the trade; some new pipes from Stanwell and a new series, which is the result of cooperation between two of the most well-known Danish pipemakers, Tom Eltang and Hans Former Nielsen.

We will also emphasize that all foreign members get an English summary with every issue of our magazine.