Peder Jeppesen

This is the man behind Jeppesen and Neerup pipes. Peder is one of the few remaining true pipe makers left in the business. I met with him at my pipe club last night. Peder has been making pipes for around thirty years having started with the famous Karl Erik and, later, with the also famous Erik Nørding. Finally he went off and became independant and started producing Neerup pipes.

He came with an interesting story concerning the Neerup name. Apparently a German importer, one of Peder’s biggest customers, registered the Neerup name in Germany under his company name thereby effectively trademarking Neerup in Germany as his and not exclusively Peder’s.
This importer then went on to have pipes made in Albania and stamped them with the Neerup name. Obviously, this wasn’t acceptable to Peder, even though it is not illegal in Germay. Needless to say the cooperation between the two soon broke down and Peder has had to contest the use of his name in the German courts. He won, but the importer has 18 months to sell his present stock. True Neerups are no longer exported to Germany.

Peder has since found a new German importer, but because of the Neerup case he has had to shift over to using his registerd name, “P. Jeppesen”, on his pipes. This continues into the daily production. Basically speaking, Neerup pipes are machine produced. Jeppesen’s are hand made.

Be careful when you consider buying Neerup estates. If it hasn’t got a “Made in Denmark” stamp, it may be a cheap Albanian knock-off and probably isn’t worth a nickel.

A few other small details came out of the meet and greet:

Peder’s machines are the same machines that were used by Georg Jensen. When Jensen stopped, Peder bought his workshop machinery.

Peder uses Sicilian briar.

So now you know!

And yes, I bought a pipe while I had the chance to get a cut-price hand made Jeppesen. I will be posting on that shortly.