E. Deguingand & Son

E. Deguingand & Son is a pipe business that took its name from the London-based merchant Émile Deguingand, sustained from the closing years of the 19th century through to the interwar period. What makes the company interesting is that its commercial centre and its production centre stood in two different countries: sales and administration were run out of London, while briar work was done in the town of Saint-Claude, in France's Jura region.

From London to Saint-Claude

Little information survives about the London side of the business; according to pipe literature the company operated in its early years around Cripplegate in the city and changed address once within 1897. These dates have no independent counterpart in English records.

The French side, by contrast, can be traced clearly through archives. According to regional inventory records, the facility taken over in Saint-Claude was founded in 1885-1886 by Charles Cayron, rebuilt around 1890, and purchased around 1897 by "the London merchant Émile Deguingand." The building was raised and extended around 1900 and 1902, and enlarged toward the northeast to nearly double its size around 1926. A census taken in 1910 records around seventy people working at the facility, twenty-seven of them women.