by Steve Laug

A month or so ago I received an email from a fellow in Japan who had some pipes he wanted to sell. He sent me a few and one of them was this interesting sandblast Pot. The Pipe was clearly stamped and read Michel Deluxe [over] Made in [over] London, England. The stamping was clear and readable. The bowl has been reamed and the pipe cleaned. The shank is very clean inside and the pipe smelled very clean. It was so clean that I don’t think the pipe had been smoked since the fellow in Japan picked it up. It looked to me like it had a repair on bottom front wall of the bowl. The damage was well repaired but looked like it was from overzealous cleaning with pipe cleaners. It looked like the kind of damage that is caused by the wire in a pipe cleaner. The rim top and edges looked very good. There was no damage to the inner or outer edges. The pipe had been given a varnish/shellac coat that made the blast very shiny. The stem looked very good. It was polished and there were no tooth marks or chatter on either side of the stem. Overall, I am happy with it but I will need to remove the shiny varnish coat. I took photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I took a photo of the rim top to show the condition of the bowl and the top. You can see clean bowl and rim top. You can also see the light repair on the bottom front of the bowl. They did a great job so it is solid. The stem looks very good with no tooth damage and no oxidation on the surface of the vulcanite.I took a photo to show the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above. I took the stem off and took a photo of the pipe to show its condition.I turned to Pipephil’s site to see what I could learn about the Michel Deluxe Made in London, England brand and particularly the sandblast one I was working on. Sadly there was nothing there under that listing. I then turned to Pipedia (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Michel) and found the following information is courtesy of Matt Hardin:

I see that there has been some confusion about these pipes recently from the entry under “Michel” on Pipedia. Not surprising at all. This tsunami of MICHEL and MICHEL DELUXE pipes which washed ashore on eBay a few months ago all came from one enormous NOS pipe auction on HiBid.

At the time I attempted to document what I could about the auction in general, who the owner was, and some detail about the hundreds of MICHEL and MICHEL DELUXE pipes included. I placed everything I could find in this long thread at Pipe Smokers Den with the full story evolving over time: https://pipesmokersdens.com/threads/the-ultimate-nos-pipe-auction.19629/

The bottom line on those pipes is that they were named after the shop which sold them: Maison Michel of NC, owner Michel J. Mitchell. They were made by a variety of private label pipe manufacturers, most probably from the 60s-70s. Some are marked Made in England, some France, some Denmark. Michel Mitchell died in 1980 after which his sister sold the store to a bank and the entire inventory of the shop sat in storage for ~40 years.

From there I followed the link given in the article to the discussion on Pipesmokersdens (https://pipesmokersdens.com/threads/the-ultimate-nos-pipe-auction.19629/page-3) an online forum that had this information:

Maison Michel was opened by Michel J. Mitchell, a Lebanese immigrant and WWII Navy veteran in Charlotte, NC in 1951. He operated his pipe and gift shop until he passed away in 1980. Thereafter his only survivor was a sibling who sells the real estate, is otherwise super wealthy (and a good person), and she puts his shop inventory in storage for 42 years until she passes away in 2022. Then in 2023 a mother lode of NOS pipes is unleashed online.  

I have included a banner below on the shop as well as some news clippings below that. Though they are small they are still readable.With the information from Pipedia I knew that I was working on a pipe from Maison Michel of North Carolina Pipe or Tobacco Shop. The one I was working on was English Made and may not have been a part of this motherlode but rather one from the shop itself. I am not sure I will ever know that for certain but it is finished while the others in the sale were not. I also learned that it was made during the 60s or 70s. Now it was time to work on the pipe.

I started my work on the pipe by addressing the shiny top coat on the bowl. It was deep in the sandblast finish and I worked on it with a brass bristle wire brush and some 100% acetone to remove the finish. It took repeated applications of acetone and the hard scrubbing of the brass bristle brush. I was able to break down the finish and open up the pores in the briar. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the finish of the bowl, rim top and shank with my fingertips and a shoe brush to get it in to the crevices and valleys. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I find that the balm really makes the briar come alive again. The contrasts in the layers of stain really made the grain in the sandblast stand out. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. The bowl really looks good at this point. The stem looked so good that I rubbed down with Obsidian Oil and used the Before & After Fine and Extra Fine Polishing Compound to protect and deepen the shine.With the bowl and the stem finished I put the beautiful Michel Deluxe Sandblast Pot back together and buffed it on the wheel using Blue Diamond to give it a shine. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the wheel. I buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It really is a great looking pipe. The dimensions of the pipe are – Length: 5 ¾ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 3/4 of an inch. The weight of this large pipe is 1.34 ounces /38 grams. This Michel Deluxe Pot is another great looking pipe. It is much more beautiful in person than these photos can capture. I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the British Pipemakers Section soon. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. This is another pipe that has the possibility of transporting the pipe man or woman back to a slower paced time in history where you can enjoy a respite. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me.