Gambier

Gambier is a clay pipe manufactory that operated from 1780 to 1928 in the town of Givet, France, on the Belgian border. It made its name with pipes whose bowls were molded in the shape of a recognizable face or figure, and was considered the most widespread clay pipe brand in France throughout the nineteenth century.

From Family Workshop to Factory

The workshop founded in 1780 by Jean Gambier, from Dieppe, produced in its early years pipes similar to the long-stemmed Dutch pipes that were the standard of the period. His son Joseph Gambier, who took over the business in 1817, made two changes: he shortened the stem and added removable mouthpieces fitted onto the neck of the bowl, and then began molding the bowl like a portrait. This produced the first industrial-scale examples of the tradition of portraits worked into pipes.

Minervin Hasslauer bought the workshop in 1835; the following year he expanded capacity further by buying the land and building of a neighboring pipe maker. Sales offices opened in Paris in 1846 and in London in 1860; the London office operated until 1896. The gold medal won at the 1849 Paris exhibition and the 1867 takeover of the rival Blanc-Garin factory in Givet made the business the region's largest producer: by 1868, six hundred people were working in its workshops.

Clay, Mold, and Firing

The choice of Givet was determined by its proximity to a clay called "derle," brought from the Andenne region of Belgium. This gray, oily clay was easy to shape, came out of the kiln white, and drew in combustion residue through its porous texture. Bowls imitating meerschaum could also be made by lightly coloring it.

The clay was first soaked and rested for weeks, and before going into the mold, the airway was opened along the stem with a greased skewer. The bowl coming out of the mold was fired at a low temperature; if it was to be colored, it was painted with a pigment mixture and glazed at high heat. The craftsmanship of the molds was the brand's distinguishing trait: bronze molds were carved for the expensive models, and cast iron or aluminum molds for the ordinary ones, hollowed out from within.

Figural Bowls and Jacob

Mold subjects included political and historical portraits, opera performers, mythological figures, animals, plants, and current events; the number of models is estimated to have exceeded sixteen hundred. The 1868 catalog also shows red-clay chibouk bowls, though these were dropped from later catalogs. The firm's catalogs are today among the most closely studied of the old pipe catalogs.

The best-selling model was Jacob, whose beard leaves a convenient place to hold the hot bowl; records indicate close to a dozen mold variants were made. Once imitations spread, the firm had some molds engraved on the turban with the wording "the real Jacob is me." A lawsuit brought over unauthorized use of the Gambier name concluded in 1861 with a ruling of unfair competition; the decision was upheld by higher courts and became a precedent in trade-name disputes.

Decline and Dissolution

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 halted production temporarily. In the years that followed, imitations, the spread of cigarettes, and the rise of the briar pipe rapidly shrank the clay pipe market; the workforce fell to 550 in 1875, 410 in 1880, and 216 in 1900. The company was converted into a joint-stock company on 4 March 1908, and a year later its staff numbered 102. During the occupation of the Ardennes region in the First World War, the workshops were converted into a field hospital. Production resumed in the early 1920s, but by 1923 only forty people were working. Maison Gambier was dissolved in 1928; the dissolution inventory records 1,250 molds. Some sources state that production had in fact ended in 1926.