My trip to Saint-Claude

Hi! Pete Prevost here. Sometime last year I received a very special invitation from my friends, Antoine Grenard (Chacom) and Bruno Nuttens (Nuttens Pipes) to come to Saint-Claude and join the Confrérie des Maîtres Pipiers de Saint-Claude (The Brotherhood of Master Pipe Makers of Saint-Claude). I was both humbled and grateful to receive this incredible honor.

I invite you to pack a pipe at this time. Even in summarizing the whole event, there is a lot to tell. So sit back and enjoy!

Let's back up a bit just in case you are not familiar with Saint-Claude and/or the  Confrérie. 

Saint-Claude is a beautiful mountain town on the far east side of France. It pretty much neighbors Geneva, Switzerland. There is a long history of pipe making there that pre-dates the use of briar for pipes. Sometime during the 1800's, one of the most important discoveries for pipes was made in this town. Briar was discovered as a wood that could be used for making pipes. That changed everything. Fast forward several years and Saint-Claude was the capital of pipe making. The birthplace of the briar pipe. Dozens of factories were in operation, employing roughly 5,000 people (nearly half of the town's population). At one time there were 30 million pipes a year being made in Saint-Claude. That number is mind blowing on several levels, but just imagine a time when pipe smoking was so common that there was a demand for that many pipes to be made in that one town alone.

Because of the importance of pipe making in Saint-Claude, a new pipe club was born in 1966. The Confrérie des Maîtres Pipiers de Saint-Claude is so much more than a pipe club though. It's a prestigious pipe brotherhood that is steeped in tradition and its meeting place is inside of the Pipe and Diamond Museum that is located in the city center of Saint-Claude. Diamond cutting was another big business in the town at one time.

To become a member, you must be invited by the brotherhood, fill out a long questionnaire, bring a personal pipe to give over to the museum, and pass a skills test at the ceremony to prove you are in fact a pipe smoker. The whole thing was a bit more daunting than I realized. 

I encourage you to search and read more history on the town and brotherhood because it is really fascinating, but that pretty much brings you up on the basic information.

So, as I mentioned before, I received an invite. I was extremely surprised, but grateful to receive this honor. I don't know how many people from the USA have joined, but I think the number is quite small. Dozens maybe, but not even 100. I told my wife, and we both agreed that we needed figure out a way to take the family and make a vacation out of it. We visited London, Paris, Saint-Claude, and concluded our trip in Dublin. The trip was incredible to say the least. Today though, I'm here to tell you about my experience joining the Confrérie in Saint-Claude.

This year marked the 150th Chapter of the Confrérie, so to celebrate, a new pipe show in Saint-Claude was organized. The pipe show itself was very successful in its first year. The pipe show kicked off on Saturday June 28th to a large room filled with vendors and consumers from all over the world. The show was a success and I'm told they plan to do the show every two years...so get ready for 2027! At the conclusion of the show, my family and I headed to the Pipe and Diamond Museum for the ceremony. 

Upon arrival, my family was escorted to the chamber room to find a seat alongside many other Confrérie members. Before you enter the chamber room, there is a room with a large table in the middle that the new inductees must wait at. The room is surrounded by glass cabinets that display personal pipes with name plaques that were donated by the approximate 1600 members. There, I waited with new and old friends from around the world for the ceremony to start and our moment to join the Brotherhood. After some brief instruction from Antoine, he left the 9 of us in the room. Not long after, the leaders of the Confrérie marched though this room and into the chamber slamming the heavy wooden door behind them shut. The main leaders of the group wear heavy yellow and blue robes and hats during the ceremony. It's pretty cool and adds to the whole mystique. Side note: Tom Eltang, one of the world's best and most famous pipe makers was dressed in a robe for the first time this year. The Danish pipe maker is the first person not from France to receive this honor.

After a few minutes, we lined up in the order we were instructed to, and knocked on the door three times. The leaders peeked through opening of the door and said something in French, and then shut us out once again. We waited, and soon they opened the door and invited us inside the chamber.

Inside, we stood in a semi-circle towards the back of the room. One at a time we were brought forward to the center of the room, where a biography about each person was read aloud to the attendees...in French. Everything was in French the entire ceremony, so only knowing some basic words and phrases, I can't tell you what was said.

After this, a pillow was brought before us that we placed our personal pipe on to give to the museum. I thought about what pipe I would bring for a long time, but decided to take something that represents me personally as a pipe maker and BriarWorks the company. One of the first pipe shapes we ever released as a company was based on a personal handmade that I made for myself early on. A stubby apple. During our early days, I took one of the factory bowls and finished out a one-off version of this pipe for myself that I have smoked for many years. It both represents me as a hand made pipe maker, and BriarWorks as a pipe factory.

At this point, a tray with several new pipes that were made in Saint-Claude were brought before us and we each selected a pipe. One at a time we walked to a table in the center of the room that had a very cool pipe stand on it. The pipe stand had a bronzed head of a person (presumably a founding member of the brotherhood) and serves as the tobacco humidor. Then coming off of the head is a bronzed arm that has 12 pipe rests built into it. We each took our turn filling our new pipe with tobacco and lighting it to show the room that we know how to smoke a pipe. Once we were all smoking our pipes, we took turns dumping our bowls out into the ashtray. Everything is very cool and symbolic. 

For the last part of the ceremony, we each took our turn having a sash with a briar Confrérie medallion placed over our necks and then Denis Blanc (owner of Butz-Choquin) literally knighted each of us with a large pipe and welcomed us to the brotherhood. We were then given a special gift and framed certificate with our name on it.

After taking several pictures, we returned the original room and each signed a large old book to solidify that we were now members of the 150th Chapter of the Brotherhood.

The party doesn't stop there! We all marched to the city center and took pictures in front of the largest pipe in the world. 9 meters tall! Then we all made our way to a special banquet dinner (which was excellent) that was held where the pipe show was earlier that day.

I was blown away by the whole event. It was extraordinary and special. It's a memory with my family that I will cherish forever and I can't wait to return to Saint-Claude to visit my pipe in the museum!