Perrin

Perrin is a small-scale production business that operated in Saint-Claude, France's pipe capital. Its founder, Roger Perrin, is recorded as having first worked in London's pipe industry before settling in Saint-Claude in the 1920s. The brand is remembered not for the number of pipes it produced but for the patented mechanism it placed inside the body.

Patented Filter Mechanism

What set Perrin pipes apart from other Saint-Claude products of the day was the internal mechanism built between mouthpiece and chamber. Made from selected briar blocks, these pipes had a large removable filter, with a small hole at the bottom of the chamber drawing in air from outside. The wording "Special filtre — Brevet Perrin" appearing on the stamp was the name of the patented solution; the hole worked something like a carburetor, feeding the airflow.

According to records, the aim was to regulate the draw and keep combustion in balance. In practice the result remained debatable: the parts were troublesome to clean, and pipe smokers did not show the mechanism the interest expected. Similar attempts appear across many European makers throughout the 20th century; for the general framework of the subject, see the pipe filters and systems entry.

From Workshop to Liquidation

When the business was founded it did not make pipes: it produced metal accessories for fountain pens and mechanical pencils. Over time the pipe accessory side was dropped, and the work concentrated solely on writing instruments; accounts say that the mechanical parts for Bic's ballpoint pens were also produced here as contract work. Turning to contract work was a path frequently taken by Saint-Claude's small workshops to stay afloat in a shrinking market.

Perrin moved from its first workshop around 1949 to the neighboring building on the same street. The building had been built in the 1920s as workshop and garage space by Eugène Vidaillet, who worked first in machine manufacturing and then in pipe production, and had at one point been leased to Coquerel and Renard. Perrin added a floor to the building and set up its own benches there. Activity nonetheless kept narrowing: production stopped around 1975, and the company was not liquidated until 1987.

Traces Today

Perrin's output never reached large volume; the brand was one of the dozens of small manufacturers that stayed in the shadow of Saint-Claude's big factories. For this reason, a stamped Perrin pipe is a piece collectors encounter far more rarely than the common French brands surviving from the era of Saint-Claude's briar revolution.