Butz-Choquin SUPERMATE Major Bent Billiard (Shape 1319)

This reference example is a bent billiard from Butz-Choquin, catalogued under the SUPERMATE line with the shape number 1319 and the size designation 'Major'. It entered the archive as a French estate pipe, meaning a previously owned and smoked example, and it serves here to document one of the most widely distributed French factory marques of the modern era. Butz-Choquin stands among the historic names of French pipe making. Production later became centred in Saint-Claude, the Jura town long regarded as the capital of French pipe manufacture, and the brand has continued there under successive ownership into the present day. Butz-Choquin's catalogue historically spanned an enormous range of named lines, of which SUPERMATE is one, each line typically pairing a consistent finish treatment with a numbered set of factory shapes. The bent billiard is among the most enduring forms in the pipe maker's repertoire: a cylindrical bowl of classic billiard proportion set on a shank and stem that curve downward, shifting the bowl's weight closer to the smoker and lending the pipe an easy, jaw-friendly hang. The 'Major' designation within a French factory line conventionally signals a larger rendition of a given shape, and the number 1319 identifies its position within the Butz-Choquin shape roster. Dating a Butz-Choquin factory pipe presents the difficulty common to most Saint-Claude production: the firm did not employ a systematic factory date code, so individual examples are bracketed by line name, stamping style, and catalogue appearances rather than by any year-specific mark. On the evidence available for this piece — the line, grade, and shape number alone — the honest conclusion is a twentieth-century attribution with the precise era left undetermined.