Sommer

Sommer is a French pipe house founded in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century that stayed in business for more than a hundred years. Its founding year is generally given as 1855, based on the founder's own statement. Though the name is associated above all with meerschaum pipes and mouthpieces, the shop window also always featured pipes made from briar.

Founding and the Move to the Passage

Jean Sommer's first recorded appearance in Paris comes in the 1856 Bottin trade directory: in the Marais district, at a pipe workshop on Rue du Temple, he is listed as the partner of Georges Hamm. Records indicate he was born in Poland and came to France in his early twenties. The partnership was not long-lived; the 1864 directory lists the two names at separate addresses, as separate businesses.

Sommer's lasting address, found in these years, was the Passage des Princes. Opened in 1860 between Rue de Richelieu and Boulevard des Italiens, this glass-roofed arcade is considered the last covered passage built in Paris in the nineteenth century. The shop was given the name Aux Carrières d'Écume — "the meerschaum quarries" — a choice built on the French term for the material, écume de mer. The way the material's name varies from language to language is discussed in the Names of Meerschaum entry. The 1875 directory shows the business spread across sections 11, 13, and 15 of the passage.

Sommer Frères and Exhibition Medals

According to records, the firm won bronze in 1867 and gold at the 1878 and 1889 Paris world's fairs. As Jean Sommer aged, he passed the business to his sons Edmond and Louis, and in the 1892 directory the title changed from J. Sommer to Sommer Frères; the brothers' name was credited with another gold medal from the 1900 exhibition. At the turn of the century they also bought the long-established Au Pacha (Maison Lenouvel) shop on Place de la Bourse. One museum record states that in the same years Maison Sommer also took over another Paris pipe factory and ran it until 1920. Jean Sommer died in 1910.

The firm's catalogue, dated to the early years of the twentieth century, carries both shops in its heading. The bulk of its pages is given over to meerschaum pipes and cigarette and cigar mouthpieces; the premium selection of briar, meanwhile, is presented with amber mouthpieces and in boxed sets. The value of such documents for period research is discussed in the Old Pipe and Tobacco Catalogues entry. Where the workshop sourced its briar has not been documented; in the France of the period this business was largely concentrated around Saint-Claude, whose emergence as a center is treated in the Briar Revolution and Saint-Claude entry.

The Faivret Era and Closure

Having no children, the Sommer brothers handed the shop over in 1936 to René Faivret, an agent for tobacco accessories. The business changed hands, but the bench in the passage kept working: ORTF's Journal de Paris report of 28 January 1966 records the trade continuing since 1855 in this small passage near the Grands Boulevards, the meerschaum workmanship, and the complaint that the trade was not passing on to younger generations. Faivret died in 1976; three years earlier he had hired meerschaum master Philippe Bargiel, who would later open his own workshop in Crépy-en-Valois.

Exactly when the end came is unclear. The passage was demolished in 1985 for a real estate project, then faithfully rebuilt and reopened in 1995. Sources give either 1988 or 1992 for the shop's closure.

Stamps and Dating

Since meerschaum pipes are considered too fragile to be stamped, dating is mostly done by examining the printing on the leather-covered box. It is thought that the medal wording on Sommer boxes was renewed following the 1878, 1889, and 1900 exhibitions, which gives a rough date range. On briar pipes the stamp reads J. Sommer Paris, and from roughly the 1950s onward, Sommer Paris. This is accompanied, according to briar quality, by one to four sun (in some sources star) marks, and in some examples by the wording Grand Luxe. After 1936, the stamp took the form SOMMER FABT – FAIVRET Sr, openly indicating the succession.