The Charac brand It was officially born in 1928, but derives from a far older family tradition. The origins of the Charac pipe, in fact, they date back to the mid-1800s, when the root for the production of pipes was discovered in Saint-Claude, which will lead the French to excel on the international market together with the Italian and the British ones.
But what is the story of this French brand?
Pipe Charac: the story
Long before the discovery of the radical, in 1825, the Comoy family it produced pipe in bosso wood For the soldiers of the Army of Napoleon, in a small village of Avignon.
When in 1856 the root and treatment was discovered to make it perfect for the manufacture of pipes, Saint-Claude becomes a place of birth and world capital of hand-made root pipes.
The founder of the Charac brand is Henri Comoy who, while he was a prisoner of war in Switzerland in 1870, met his cousins of the Chapuis family, and proposed to form an association. The Charac brand, in fact, is nothing more than The Union of Chapuis and Comoy names.
A few years later. In 1879, Henri Comoy went to London and founded the first pipe factory in England, the H. Comoy & C. Ltd, while the French Factory of Saint-Claude provides him with the root and the stove already blurted out.
Henri Comoy died in 1924 and the direction of the Saint-Claude and London factory passes to the children Paolo and Adrien, together with the cousins Emile and Louis Chapis.
Immediately after the Second World War, the Charac brand assumed commercial freedom and launched a very modern range of pipes, thanks to which it became the main brand in France, Belgium and England, coming to be the number one also in Germany, Scandinavia and the United States .
Upon the death of Adrien Comoy, the management passes to his son Pierre, and in the meantime the characa became the first French pipe brand in Japan, in 1965.
A decade later, an independent freehand pipe manufacturer, Pierre Morel, creates a surprising line for the brand Le Charac Grand Cru, to then join the company full -time.
The Charac brand today
Even today, thanks to the maintenance of traditional methods for the production of pipes, the Charac remains the largest French brand in the world, and today their pipes are distributed in 58 countries.
At the helm of the brand there is Antoine Gerard, which is part of the sixth generation of the family, and which has been the creator of different models of design pipes, such as Sfera, Vulcano and Monza, while remaining faithful to the tradition and quality of the Charac pipes.
His father, Yves Gerard, together with the artist Pierre Morel designing most of the characaders on the market, which are currently 185,000 every year.
