Jeantet

Jeantet is one of the oldest family names in Saint-Claude pipe-making. The family entered the record as owners of a wood-turning workshop in an era when the briar pipe did not yet exist, grew over the nineteenth century into one of the town's largest producers, and in 1988 stopped being an independent maker and became the brand of a group.

From Family Bench to Partnership

The Jeantet name is recorded in connection with a business in Saint-Claude from as early as 1775. The firm's work at the time was not pipe-making but woodworking generally: wooden shanks fitted to porcelain bowls, and pipes made from wild cherry wood in particular. The firm took the name Jeantet-David in 1816, and in 1837 became a partnership uniting numerous small workshops scattered across the town under a single trade name.

The change in material came in 1858; from that date onward, briar became the firm's main raw material. Growth was rapid: by 1890, more than fifty people were working for Jeantet. Once the limits of working with scattered workshops were reached, construction of an integrated factory that would concentrate production in a single site began around 1891 on Rue de Bonneville; the building took several years to complete. In 1898, Maurice Jeantet reorganized the business and expanded the facility by buying the neighboring workshop to the south. Another branch of the family would, a few years later, found Paul Jeantet SA, a factory devoted to stem production. Having rough shaping and polishing and other intermediate steps circulate among home-based subcontractors was standard practice in Saint-Claude at the time.

Peak and Closure

The company converted to a limited-liability status in 1938. In this period there was also a branch workshop at Montréal-la-Cluse, in the Ain department, where finishing was done on the cheaper models. By the 1948 census, the Saint-Claude workforce appears to have exceeded a hundred, part of whom worked from home. The facility was modernized around 1950 with additions such as freight elevators.

Production reached its peak around 1969, then declined sharply within less than a decade. Even though a steam-based facility for drying briar — quite modern for its day — was built in the factory yard around 1979, the trend did not reverse: by 1987, the workforce had fallen to twenty-two.

Handover of the Brand

Wanting to keep the name alive, the family sat down with Yves Grenard — once Jeantet's chief designer, head of Chapuis-Comoy since 1971, and said to be a distant relative of Pierre Comoy of Comoy's of London. As a result, Jeantet joined the Cuty Fort group in 1988, alongside the John Lacroix and Emile Vuillard brands, under the leadership of Chacom, founded in 1987. The factory was closed; its buildings were purchased by the Saint-Claude municipality in 1989, and when alternative use plans failed to materialize, the structures were marked for demolition, with the southern workshop disappearing before 1992.

The brand name itself, however, is not lost. Following the closure, Jeantet was carried on as one of Chapuis-Comoy's secondary brands, and Saint-Claude-made pipes continue to be marketed under this stamp.