The Birth of La Bruyère

jorgesoler · Jan 17, 2015

The briar pipe is, without question, the most popular pipe ever, and the one whose origin is the least understood. Mind if I offer my views on the origin of this species? As you read, you’ll readily see that it’s all very perplexing and entangled because of a very wide spectrum of views and opinions. The briar’s evolution is dubious, and my research illustrates that the written history of this pipe, more than the written record regarding any other pipe, is rife with paradoxes, contradictions, and outright exaggerations. Trying to paint a true and accurate history of the briar is akin to the military “fog of war”; in researching the briar, I encountered the “fog of raw” information, veritable enigmas wrapped in riddles. What I find strange is that one expects to encounter some vagaries in tracing the much earlier history of the origin of meerschaum, but of the briar’s evolution, more than 100 years later, one should expect that historical information be more concrete. It is not! The story has been reprised from book to book, a bit of embellishment here, a slight exaggeration there, ever more elaborate as each writing effort explains how it all began. Well, here’s what I’ve found. You be the judge of its accuracy and authenticity, and if you remember everything you’ve read in pipe books in the past, not much of the following will surprise you.
http://smokingjacketmagazine.com/2015/01/17/the-birth-of-la-bruyere/

cobguy · Jan 17, 2015

Interesting read Jorgesoler!
I was just recently reading how Ferdinando Rossi from Milan had traveled to St. Claude, France

and was instrumental in basically bringing standardized briar pipes to Italy.

Prior to that time, many pipes were still made of Box or Olive wood laboriously crafted by hand.
Apparently, it took some doing as the French were somewhat secretive of the machinery and process.
His work eventually led to other companies such as Castello, Brebbia and Savinelli.

Incidentally, it is Savinelli who now carries the Rossi name forward.
For more info and some cool old pictures: http://pipedia.org/wiki/Rossi

papipeguy · Jan 17, 2015

Thanks to both of you for some interesting reading. No real surprises here but a lot of good info to fill some blanks.

sablebrush52 · Jan 17, 2015

From "Loewe Of The Haymarket", printed in 1926:
"The opening in 1856 of Loewe's pipe-shop in the Haymarket marked an epoch in the history of smoking, for it was there that Loewe who, newly arrived from his native France, first introduced the pipe made of briar to English smokers. The enterprise was a bold one for a stranger to undertake. Always conservative at heart, Englishmen were ever suspicious of change and distrustful of that which is new, and there were not wanting those who prophesied an early and ignominious failure for the Frenchman and his loved pipe."
That would have been a pretty good trick if briar hadn't come into use until two years later. So the 1858 or later datings can be discounted.
Barling won an award at the Great Exposition of 1851, but it was for sterling mounting of meerschaum pipes.
Comoy didn't open its English factory until the 1870's.
As for when briar as a material for pipes was first discovered, we have only anecdotes. It would not surprise me to learn that it had been around at least since the 1840's. It's rather hard for me to believe that it was discovered on a Saturday and in widespread use the following Sunday.

pitchfork · Jan 17, 2015

Google n-gram viewer suggests that c 1870 is when the English-speaking world first noticed the briar pipe.

EDIT: This might be a little easier on the eyes.

pitchfork · Jan 18, 2015

Interesting ad from The Freeman's Journal (Dublin), 1874.

pitchfork · Jan 18, 2015

Well, we can go back to 1860 for briar pipes in Dublin at least. The Freeman's Journal (Dublin), 1860.

pitchfork · Jan 18, 2015

OK, we can go back to 1859 for Ireland: "Sweet Briar Root." The Irish Examiner (Dublin), 1859.

pitchfork · Jan 18, 2015

Another interesting tidbit. Aldoph Frankau announces in 1869 that they will begin using the BBB logo on all of their pipes. The Freeman's Journal (Dublin), 1869.

jorgesoler · Jan 18, 2015

I think we should put a book together with all of this info and post it online as a PDF for free. If we succeed on this and it attracts enough people, maybe we could print it off on demand and sell it for a fee.

warren · Jan 18, 2015

Thanks guys! I love the history of anything. Most legends are based, however loosely, on a kernel of truth. The fact remains that you, I and the others are late to the party by a couple of hundred years and, are left to enjoy the results of years of experience and experiments with the lowly briar root. And . . . I'll have a toast to the individual who first thought to take up a nasty old root, spend the time to carve a bowl and airway, stuff a bit of noxious, and no doubt, expensive weed inside and put it to a match.

misterlowercase · Jan 18, 2015

What a great thread!

:clap:
Many thanks for the link jorgesoler,

the article is very well written.
Ben Rapaport is the man when it comes to such intensive histories and always a joy to read.
This is pretty neat too:

http://tobaccopipeartistory.blogspot.com/2014/10/briar-burl-and-ebaucheur-de-pipes.html
:
Could this perhaps be an early bruyere pipe?

It certainly is "raw".

:
Pitchfork,

good googly woogly there!

Love it.

Question - how to you get the header to appear?

Do you use (code) to embed?
usually I c&p the img location and just paste it here,

it always lacks the header and I have to manually add it,

like this:

Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Issue 17, 1914
:

Seven Years at Eton, 1857-1864
:

Temple Bar, Volume 9, 1863
:

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, Volume 1, 1865
:

"We walked for some time in silence, Alfred smoking a brier-root pipe, and I thinking how many bad passions pleasure contrives to plant in the country, and how vigorously they thrive. We passed by a homestead where the cattle, knee-deep in ..."

Chambers's Edinburgh journal, conducted by W. Chambers.
:

jorgesoler · Jan 18, 2015

Oh dear, that pipe is so beautiful. I want one. : puffy

:

ravkesef · Jan 18, 2015

Fascinating article. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

pitchfork · Jan 18, 2015

mlc,
The header is just from the database results. Where I work, we have access to a number of newspaper databases and the results are just tagged like that. What I posted are just screenshots.

ejames · Jan 18, 2015

Very interesting! Thanks!!

misterlowercase · Jan 18, 2015

Very cool I think,

'ppreciate it Pitch!
I need to get to a proper library and do a search thru material I usually don't have access to,

wish I still lived in Athens, it was great that UGA allowed citizens to obtain an "outside borrower's card" for the modest sum of $10.

I miss those stacks. Sigh. :|

:

:

:
An interesting, but squinty difficult to read, article:

The Briar Root and Its Substitutes,

Hardwood Record,

Volume 37,

1913
:

Australian advert

1867
:

Australian advert

1869
:

BRIAR PIPES
The old fashioned wood and horn pipes have of late years been superseded by the well known briar pipe made from the hard comparatively incombustible wood of various species of briar and of many other trees
These pipes are manufactured in Germany and in France but more particularly in this latter country where Saint Claude in the Jura has the monopoly of the commoner kinds and the city of Paris that of the more expensive carved ones
Briar pipes are packed in pasteboard boxes holding from two to three dozen
Their forms are very varied and their mouthpieces of either horn or amber
Their cost in Europe varies from $5 to $25 per gross according to their degree of finish
Some of the elaborately sculptured Paris briar pipes sell as high as from $1 to $2 each in which case the bowl in generally lined with an internal coating of meerschaum
The manufacture of both meerschaum and briar pipes has of late been introduced into the United States and appears to be in a thriving condition
In our next number we will give an account of the method of manufacturing the ordinary clay tobacco pipes with a description of the furnace used to bake them
Scientific American,

Volume 20,

1869

:

A family tree,

Volume 3,

Albany de Grenier Fonblanque,

1876

misterlowercase · Jan 18, 2015

Oh dear, that pipe is so beautiful. I want one.

A few makers made similar "raw root" pipes, but certainly not as cool as that one,

I love it too!
Example of what I'm talking about,

HARDCASTLE'S OLD BRUYERE Ugly Blob Shape Estate Pipe Made In England CRACKED SHANK
What a wonderful description to induce crazy bidding wars!

Ugly Blob Shape

LOL
Better examples pop up from time to time, in much better condition, but it would take a while to find a really really cool one I think...

: puffy

:

misterlowercase · Jan 20, 2015

menuhin · Apr 25, 2015

Interesting article!
The author claimed:

Whatever the exact year, month, week, day, hour, and minute that the first briar pipe was finished and ready for sale and use, the inescapable conclusion is that it was certainly sometime after 1850, not earlier, and that first pipe was probably made in Saint-Claude, although the name of its maker may never be brought to light. There is little doubt that Saint-Claude was “…the center of an industry that introduced the highly prized briar pipe to smokers.”

Pipes can be made from briar root was written in a 1859 French guide for smokers, while whenever the exact date between 1820 or 1850 that the first briar pipe was made doesn't matter so much.
One point that I do want to add is that there is an old little pipe making town in Corse / Corsica, whose pipe making economy was taken over by the mountain-surrounded town of Saint Claude, almost no one mentions this town any longer. This town is called d'Orezza.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie-d%27Orezza
It makes more sense that the first briar pipe was created in d'Orezza if the history of pipe making in d'Orezza is longer and that there location of d'Orezza enabled craftsmen there to explore briar root as pipe making material more readily.

The Birth of La Bruyère

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