Directory of Swiss Pipe Brands

Directory of Swiss Pipe Brands gathers the country's scattered record of pipe making onto a single page. Swiss pipe making has two distinct faces: on one side, the small factories that clustered in the village of Kleinlützel at the end of the 19th century and earned it the name "Switzerland's Saint-Claude"; on the other, the one-person workshops that emerged after the 1990s, most run by people making pipes alongside their main profession. The entries below are short and factual; brands with no further detail in the records are still kept in the list, with the gaps noted.

Brands

• Egloff — Almost nothing is on record about pipes signed Peter Egloff; the one surviving description says the shapes were classic in line and light in build. Behind the brand was Luzern-based Egloff Tobaccobar AG, which ran both a tobacconist's shop and pipe manufacture and sales; the company voted to dissolve in May 2007 and applied to be struck from the Luzern canton trade register.

• Kappeler — The one-person workshop of Alex Kappeler, working in Amriswil. Kappeler's main occupation is as a musician and music teacher; he took up the bench in 2008. The records give no information on the scale of production or preferred shapes.

• La Pipa — The workshop Stefan Capaul runs in the highlands of Graubünden, in the village of Disla near Disentis. Capaul settled here after trying several different fields of training and work and spending a period as a traveling craftsman. A wish to set a handmade pursuit against his regular job drew him to pipe making; what began around 1999-2000 with a few hand tools stopped being merely a way to fill the long Swiss winters and became a lasting passion.

• Tom's Pipe-Line — The brand of Thomas Habermacher. When Habermacher attended one of the courses held by Aargau pipe master Franz von Matt at the Ballenberg course center in April 2001, his aim was not to make pipes but to understand how a pipe is put together. The stemmed poker that came off the bench that weekend changed his intention: adding a few machines to his hobby workshop, he took up making briar pipes in his spare time. Von Matt continued both to guide him and to supply quality briar. The first pipes stayed for Habermacher's own use; later ones were given to friends and experienced pipe smokers.

• Tschan — Kleinlützel's second pipe factory. After Josef Brunner (Bru-Bu) set up the village's first workshop, Moritz Tschan opened his own business in 1892; together the two factories turned the village into the country's pipe-manufacturing center. Over time the production line also came to include canes and other wooden goods; at its busiest the business employed about ten people. The benches stopped turning in the early 1990s. Bruno Tschan, representing the fourth generation, continued selling off the remaining stock and showed occasional visitors around the building under the name Kleinlützel Pipe Museum. The firm, registered for pipe and cane manufacture and trade, was struck from the trade register on 28 June 2004.

• Wagner Tabak-Lädeli — Zurich's tobacconist's shop, formerly known as Ehrsam; it has been in the hands of the Wagner family since 1974. In 1985 the shop commissioned Jess Chonowitsch to design a series under its own name; this line of classic models with a light Danish sensibility later passed into the hands of Jørn Larsen. The series comprises four shapes — billiard, pot, lovat, and prince — each made in smooth and sandblasted finishes with silver-banded fittings.

• WR Freehand Pipes — The brand of Wolfgang Röllin, a trained piano maker who runs a shop selling musical instruments in Zug. The name also sums up his working approach: the pipes are shaped along freehand lines. Beyond the master's profession and location, no further information is on record.