The Briar Revolution and Saint-Claude

The briar revolution is the name given to briar's (briar) rise, in the second half of the 19th century, to become the primary material of pipemaking, largely displacing clay and meerschaum from everyday use within just a few decades. The center of this transformation is the town of Saint-Claude in France's Jura mountains: the first briar pipes are believed to have been made there, and the town is still known today as "the world capital of pipemaking."

Saint-Claude, a Town of Turners

Long before it encountered briar, Saint-Claude was already a craft center known for wood turning; records indicate that around 500 turners were working in the town in 1811. This ready pool of skilled labor and its established workshop tradition had already prepared the town for the production scale the new material would demand. The exact date of the first briar pipe is not known, but sources point to the 1850s, most often 1854 or 1856. The pace of the transformation is striking: by 1892, 2,300 pipe workers are recorded as working across 66 workshops in and around the town.