Hilson

Hilson is a factory pipe brand founded in the town of Bree, in Belgium's Limburg region, that became known across much of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. In its home country the business was known by the Hillen brothers' name (Broers Hillen), while the Hilson stamp was used on pipes sent abroad; the name is understood to derive from a merger of the Hillen surname with the English suffix "son."

From the Bree Workshop to a Factory

Records indicate the business's core was a clay pipe manufactory founded in Bree in 1846; the account attributing the founding to Jean Knödgen is the most widely circulated. The Pipedia entry, on the other hand, attributes the same year directly to the Hillen name, so the identity of the first founder is disputed among sources. What is agreed upon is that at the end of the nineteenth century the business passed to the Hillen family through marriage, and that clay pipe production was gradually replaced by briar. By the 1920s, the Bree facility could process briar pipes in-house from start to finish.

According to the account given, what truly accelerated exports after the Second World War was the family's second generation: one brother took on sales, the other production, and the foreign languages and connections acquired during the war years made expansion beyond Belgium easier. This detail rests on a single source and should be read with caution.