Sommer

Sommer is a French pipe house founded in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century that stayed in business for more than a hundred years. Its founding year is generally given as 1855, based on the founder's own statement. Though the name is associated above all with meerschaum pipes and mouthpieces, the shop window also always featured pipes made from briar.

Founding and the Move to the Passage

Jean Sommer's first recorded appearance in Paris comes in the 1856 Bottin trade directory: in the Marais district, at a pipe workshop on Rue du Temple, he is listed as the partner of Georges Hamm. Records indicate he was born in Poland and came to France in his early twenties. The partnership was not long-lived; the 1864 directory lists the two names at separate addresses, as separate businesses.

Sommer's lasting address, found in these years, was the Passage des Princes. Opened in 1860 between Rue de Richelieu and Boulevard des Italiens, this glass-roofed arcade is considered the last covered passage built in Paris in the nineteenth century. The shop was given the name Aux Carrières d'Écume — "the meerschaum quarries" — a choice built on the French term for the material, écume de mer. The way the material's name varies from language to language is discussed in the Names of Meerschaum entry. The 1875 directory shows the business spread across sections 11, 13, and 15 of the passage.