Butz-Choquin Imperial 1773 Smooth Bent Apple, post-1951 St. Claude era

This reference example documents a Butz-Choquin Imperial shape 1773, a smooth bent apple produced in St. Claude, France. The pipe presents a rounded briar bowl in a polished smooth finish, joined to a thick shank and fitted with a curved acrylic stem. The Imperial line incorporates a 9mm filter system, reflected directly in the nomenclature, which reads Butz Choquin / Imperial Filter 9 / St. Claude / France / 1773 across its stamped lines. The apple is one of the classic rounded bowl forms of the traditional shape chart, and in its bent configuration the stem curvature brings the bowl closer to the smoker's line of sight while distributing weight toward the hand. This example measures 5.55 inches in length with a bowl height of 1.83 inches, a chamber depth of 1.49 inches, a chamber diameter of 0.79 inches, and an outside bowl diameter of 1.57 inches, at a weight of 2.1 ounces — proportions consistent with a substantial but balanced everyday apple. Butz-Choquin traces its origins to 1858 and the collaboration of Jean-Baptiste Choquin and Gustave Butz in Metz, where the young firm distinguished itself with innovations in bent pipe design. In 1951 the marque was relocated to St. Claude — the historic centre of French briar pipemaking — under Berrod-Regad, and its catalogue expanded considerably in the decades that followed, growing from a modest range of roughly ten shapes to some seventy. The Imperial series belongs to this later chapter, marrying traditional French shaping with the modern 9mm filter format popular in continental markets. Dating rests on the stamping itself: the St. The honest bracket for this pipe is therefore the post-1951 St. Claude era, without a narrower factory date code to refine it further.