Paul Jeantet SA

Paul Jeantet SA is an ebonite mouthpiece factory founded in Saint-Claude, France's pipe capital. It stands apart in being not a workshop that made pipes, but an industrial concern that supplied parts to those who did: it was born at the start of the twentieth century with the aim of turning into domestic production the mouthpieces French makers had been forced to import from Germany.

A Factory Founded Against German Imports

At the end of the nineteenth century, Saint-Claude was the world center of the briar pipe; yet mouthpieces remained outside this picture. According to inventory records, nearly all of the mouthpieces the town used in those years came from German factories. To break this dependency, a facility aimed at ebonite mouthpiece production was built in the Faubourg des Moulins district in 1905-1906. The venture ran into financial trouble from 1908 and was taken over by Paul Jeantet, son of pipe manufacturer Raymond Jeantet. In this way the long-established Jeantet family entered the mouthpiece business as well, after already being in pipe bodies.

Paul Jeantet restructured the business under the name "Manufacture de Caoutchouc et d'Ebonite Paul Jeantet-Morard et Cie." The plant also took part in wartime production during the First World War and grew rapidly afterward; inventory records indicate that by the 1920s daily mouthpiece output had reached around 120,000 units. This scale was enough to localize the mouthpiece supply of Saint-Claude houses such as Chacom and Butz-Choquin.