copy of Chacom Oscar Sablé by Tom Eltang

Saint-Claude is a small French town situated in the Upper Jura Regional Nature Park, at the confluence of the Bienne and Tacon rivers and in a beautiful mountainous environment, the town of Saint-Claude is famous for its craft, especially for the manufacture of briar pipes and it is considered the world capital in this discipline. To find out the origin of this statement, we must go back to 1825 and travel to Avignon, a small town near Saint-Claude , where the Comoy family made boxwood pipes for the "Grumbelers" of Napoleon´s army. 26 years later, in Saint-Claude factories the briar curing process for the pipes production was consolidated.

In 1879 Henry Comoy emigrated to London with some of his Saint-Claude technicians and established the first English pipe factory the H. Commoy & Cº LTD. The Saint-Claude factory manageed by his cousins, the Chapuis family, supplies them whith briarwood and pipe bowls.

In 1922 the association Comoy and Chapuis is realised and the Saint-Claude factory becomes the CHAPUIS COMOY & Cie.

It will not be untill 1928 when the London factory will be able to produce its own pipes, and in order to develop the Saint-Claude factory, the brand CHACOM is created, using the first three letters of the CHApuis and COMoys families.

Nowadays, Chacom factoy counts with 20 employees who manage to perpetuate a century-old know-how and give a modern touch to the briar pipes. Talking about Chacom and the briar pipe is practically the same. Chacom is the origin of the French, British and therefore worldwide tradition of pipe production. A Chacom is a piece of history that cannot be missing in a good collection.