Blatter & Blatter

Blatter & Blatter is a Canadian pipe workshop founded in Montreal in 1907 and carried on by the same family for five generations. It was known in its early years as "Blatter Bros."; today it is considered the last workshop in the city to finish briar pipes entirely by hand from start to finish. The workshop's line rests not on ornament but on plain shapes proportioned for use.

From Europe to Montreal

Which founding figure the family should be credited to varies from source to source: the common account says the family was founded by French-born Frédéric-Georges Blatter, while some accounts place the brothers Ernest and Henri-Georges directly at the head of the business. What is consistent is that the craft was learned in France and carried outside Europe. Records indicate the family ran a pipe workshop in London in the late 1890s; when the workshop burned down, they moved to South Africa, producing and selling in both Cape Town and Durban. In 1907 it was Montreal's turn; a workshop and an attached shop were opened in the city.

Working alongside Frédéric-Georges were his son Ernest and Ernest's half-brother Henri. The business expanded rapidly: by the 1930s it is reported the workshop employed around fifty people and supplied pipes to five separate points of sale. The Great Depression and the years of the Second World War pulled this scale back; in the early 1950s production and retail were merged under one roof. Having remained on the same street for sixty-three years, the business moved in 1970 to another street in the city, its current location.