Amiel

Amiel is a pipe brand that operated in Philippeville (renamed Skikda after 1962), the port city of French colonial Algeria. The facility, considered the country's first pipe factory according to records, takes its name from its founder, engineer Raoul Amiel. What makes the brand notable beyond its own scale is that it set out to produce finished pipes in a country that otherwise only exported briar as a raw material.

Founding and Algerian Briar

Accounts say the Amiel family came from Nancy, France: they left the city in 1870 during the German occupation, stayed for a time in Florence, and eventually settled in Philippeville. The factory is reported to have opened its doors in 1932, with founding capital supplied by a local family. The plant's layout and machinery were Raoul Amiel's own work, and it is described as a modern workshop by the standards of its time.

The factory's location here was no accident. The adoption of briar as a pipe material in the second half of the nineteenth century had made Saint-Claude, in France's Jura region, the center of world pipe making; this process is covered in the Briar Revolution and Saint-Claude entry. As the century turned, the old Mediterranean collection grounds could no longer keep up with rising demand, and the search shifted to North Africa. Records show that after 1905, Algeria's briar forests were seriously explored as a source. The extracted root burls were cut into rough blanks (ebauchons) and shipped by sea to France, especially to Saint-Claude. Amiel can be read as an attempt to keep the final link of this chain within the country itself.