Old Pal

Old Pal is a briar pipe brand made in France, known today only through surviving examples passed from hand to hand. Its production period is estimated not from documents but from the form of the stamp; the common view is that the brand belongs to the first half of the 20th century. The name is thought to have been less a workshop's own signature than one of the trade names a large factory used for retailers. For this reason, what is known about Old Pal comes not from catalogues but from the stamp on the shank.

The Stamp

On Old Pal pipes the brand name is struck on the left face of the shank in a slight arc. Just below the name is a bird figure with wings spread to both sides, and below that the words "Made in France." This bird is the brand's most distinctive mark and the first detail a collector trying to identify the maker looks at. Yet no record has ever surfaced matching the figure to any French firm's corporate emblem; rather than answering the question of identity, the bird keeps it open. Shape numbers are also stamped separately on the shank; surviving examples are mostly straight and slightly bent (bent) billiard shapes. The bodies are worked from briar blocks.

The Question of the Maker

Which workshop Old Pal came from is not known for certain today. There is one written basis: "Who Made That Pipe," the reference book matching brand names to manufacturers, gives two French manufacturer names for the entry — Marechal, Ruchon & Cie. and Rubinovich & Haskell Ltd. Neither name appears alongside Old Pal in any other source; both are therefore unconfirmed, cited only as an attribution.

Rubinovich & Haskell Ltd. does not appear elsewhere in pipe literature; there is no information on where the firm was founded or its production history. It is recorded here only because it is named in that source. Marechal, Ruchon & Cie., by contrast, is a well-documented company historically — but Old Pal appears in none of that documentation either. The preference weighted toward this second firm within the community rests not on evidence but on probability: a manufacturer of scale would be expected to put out numerous secondary brands.

The firm in question is the Paris house that held the GBD brand, tracing back to 1850 and the partnership founded by Ganneval, Bondier, and Donninger. Because partner Bondier outlived the other two by about thirty years, the company name changed repeatedly: first Bondier, Ulrich & Cie., then Bine, Marechal & Cie., and finally A. Marechal, Ruchon & Cie. The names of Auguste Marechal and Ferdinand Ruchon stayed in the company title for more than fifty years. In 1902 the firm merged with London's A. Oppenheimer & Co.; as GBD's ownership passed into British capital, production continued at workshops in Paris and Saint-Claude. A 1915 London directory of briar pipe manufacturers listing the two companies separately but at the same address shows that both names were used side by side for some time after the merger. This is exactly the kind of structure a secondary name like Old Pal could have emerged from — but no record has been found showing that it did.

Its Place Today

The brand has long been out of production. Surviving pipes are collected because they represent the understated but solid craftsmanship of the period when French factories moved to series production after the briar revolution. With no serial record available for dating, the only measures left are the form of the stamp and the mouthpiece material, and these give only a rough date range. In this respect, Old Pal is a typical example of the broad, undocumented lower stratum of 20th-century French pipe production.