Butz Choquin Rodate

Jean-Baptiste Choquin of Metz began his career as a tobacconist. His business proved so successful that he soon had several employees. Among them was a certain Gustave Butz, who was his first employee and went on to become his son-in-law by marrying Choquin’s daughter, Marie, in 1858. In 1858, Jean-Baptiste Choquin, in collaboration with Gustave Butz, created the Choquin pipe. It was a curved pipe with a flat-bottomed bowl, finished with an albatross bone mouthpiece secured with a silver ring. In 1858, Gustave Butz built a factory in Metz to manufacture the Choquin pipe. Production continued until 1951, when the brand was acquired by the Berrod-Regad company, which decided to relocate the headquarters to Saint-Claude, then also known as ‘the world capital of briar pipes’. Within a few years, the brand’s collection grew from ten to seventy series. 135 years after its foundation, the Butz Choquin pipe is still well known not only in France but throughout the world.