Adler

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The following submission is courtesy of Racine & Laramie Tobacconist

In the history of Hungarian pipe-carving the town of Óbuda had importance. After the Edict of Tolerance of Joseph II in 1791 many Jewish craftsmen began to resettle to Óbuda. But the local craftsmen, protecting their guilds, refused to allow the Jews within the town between the closing and opening of the gates. Beyond the walls was part of the property of the Zichy family, and the Jews were allowed to settle outside the walls. In the 1848 census, at Óbuda there were eleven Jewish pipemakers and carvers, two pipe copperers and a number of pipe merchants.

Alder Fülöp had been living in Óbuda by 1795. His family, around 1797, bought a house on Deák Ferenc Street in Pest. The gold-smith’s guild for Buda and Pest would not accept him as a member until 1820-33, so he continued to use the hallmark of Óbuda with his personal seal for his gold and silver work. The family appears also to include wood carvers and artists.

From the 1830’s Fülöp worked with his son Józef who took over the shop in 1848. To increase the salability of his pipes the Adlers quickly incorporated literary events into their pipe carving. With a whole legion of pipe-carvers working for the workshop the aging Adler and his son Józef served the Hungarian customer’s dream of national freedom wreathed in tobacco smoke.

In the 1860’s Adler pipes with a shell foot were most sought after, and the Adler workshop made the balled ornamentation fashionable. In the last third of the century Adler Henrik was in charge of the workshop. They made and sold the majority of meerschaums in Budapest at the end of the century. The Adler workshop was awarded the grand-prix for their entire output in the goldsmith category at the Millennium National Exhibition of 1896. The aristocracy and politicians regularly visited the small shop on Deák Ferenc Street at the end of the century. The workshop’s golden Age lasted until the First World War. In 1910 the Adler company was managed by Richard Schmidt who continued to produce meerschaums under the Adler name until his death in 1936.

The Adler workshop supplied Hungary’s most discerning smokers with quality meerschaum pipes for 150 years.

Reference: Ferenc Levardy, Our Pipe-Smoking Forebears, 1994, Druckhaus Oberpfalz, Germany