SIF - Société Industrielle de Ferblanterie History

Société Industrielle de Ferblanterie was founded on 9 December 1899. Seven small tinsmithing firms merged into one company with its head office at 61 rue des Archives in Paris and a starting capital of 1,600,000 francs.
The founding statutes were deposited with the Paris notary Aubron on 22 November 1899. They record what each party brought in. Jules Villers contributed his ferblanterie at Solre-le-Château, valued at 507,000 francs. Carrion, later Carrion-Petit, brought his works at faubourg Perpreuil in Beaune. The widow Juillet and her children brought the family business at Chalon-sur-Saône. Lefèvre and Parmentier brought their firm at Fresnes. A separate deed of 30 December 1899 adds a second Beaune business, that of the Pierre-Bordès couple at 7 rue de la Gare. Company letterheads from 1911 and 1913 still list all of them by name.

The company made household goods in tinplate and a growing line of metal toys. The factories were at Solre-le-Château (Nord), Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire), Beaune (Côte-d'Or) and Fresnes (Nord).

By 1903 SIF was advertising a hurricane lantern under the name L'Étincelante. The 1907 advertisement adds a second model, La Phébus, alongside the household tinware.
In 1906 the Beaune works employed 70 to 80 workers and bought adjoining land for new buildings. Fifty to sixty further hires were expected, to keep up with orders. In June of that year two workplace accidents at Beaune were reported in the same week. Étienne-Émile Pierre, aged 17, bruised his thumb on a wringing machine. Alexis Annaz, a tinsmith of 29, injured his hand on a file.
In August 1909 SIF acquired the patents and surviving equipment of Jouets de Paris, a toy manufacturer whose Montreuil factory had just burned down. SIF kept the Jouets de Paris name for its toy output.

In 1913 Marillier frères et Cie of Chalon-sur-Saône sold its tinware clientele and production to SIF. Marillier made both tinware and lighting equipment and retained the exclusive right to manufacture lighting equipment, headlamps and lanterns. The firm went on to specialise in headlamps, bicycle lanterns and automobile generators.

By June 1909 the Paris address had moved to 39 Boulevard Beaumarchais. A statute amendment of that month gives it as the registered office, as do two trademark deposits filed in November.
On 2 November 1909 SIF registered two word marks with the Tribunal de Commerce de la Seine. "La Lumineuse" covered lanterns and lighting apparatus. "Verre Lumineux" covered the globes and chimneys that went with them. SIF sold lantern glass as a branded article of its own.

By 1923 the lantern range ran to La Beaunoise, L'Étincelante, Le Phébus and La Lumineuse. That year SIF also issued a separate price list, Tarif N° 1, "Articles Spéciaux pour Bazars et Colporteurs", aimed at bazaars and door-to-door sellers.

In March 1920 SIF's management called all workers at the Chalon-sur-Saône factory together for an announcement. The notice does not say what the announcement concerned. It appeared on a page otherwise given over to strike news among Chalon's metalworkers and gas workers and to a national miners' strike in the Pas-de-Calais. A connection between the two is a hypothesis, not something the source states.

In August 1926 a metalworkers' strike broke out at Beaune, with SIF among the firms involved. The plants at Solre-le-Château, Fresnes and Chalon-sur-Saône were drawn into a wider metalworkers' movement across the Côte-d'Or. The initial demands were 50 centimes more per hour for skilled workers, 25 centimes for the rest, and 20% more for piece rates. By early September the Beaune strike had run sixteen days.

One account of the employers' conduct comes from a single partisan source, the communist weekly Le Semeur, and is not corroborated elsewhere. It reports that management used individual letters, posters and misleading circulars against the strikers, that a supervisor acted as a police informant, and that the same supervisor threatened a foreign employee with expulsion over an unrelated dispute.
At a later meeting the director conceded ground. He dropped an earlier threat to dismiss the union's assistant secretary, agreed to a sliding wage scale and offered a cost-of-living allowance. He added a bonus for workers with children under thirteen, free lighting, and a wage increase pegged to 1914 hourly rates. The strikers voted to continue. They wanted the full cost-of-living allowance folded into wages rather than deducted when hours were lost, and the rest of their original demands met in full.

Company advertising from 1929 shows five factories. The catalogue is split between household articles in tinplate, sheet steel, zinc and aluminium, and metal toys, with mechanical and electric trains among the specialities. A hiring notice in a Côte-d'Or newspaper that March has the Beaune factory recruiting men, women and children.

SIF sold its toy output under the brand name "jouets français". It also held the exclusive French concession for household goods made by the Belgian enamelware firm Société Nouvelle de Produits Émaillés, of Saint-Servais-lès-Namur. By November 1932 the toy workshops were spread over seven factories, covering the stamping of parts, assembly, and a test track for the miniature cars.

By 1933 the household range ran to polished, printed and lacquered tinware: saucepans, plates, watering cans, funnels, strainers, baking moulds, shovels and coal buckets, umbrella stands, decorated spice boxes and potato mashers, alongside the hurricane lanterns. The toys covered beach toys, toy stoves, carts, cars, racing games, boats and automobiles, with mechanical and electric trains as a speciality. Five factories were still in operation. The telegraph address at the time, Juvillers-Paris, combines the names of the founding Juillet and Villers families.

By 1933 SIF was also publishing a separate catalogue for pure aluminium household ware, made at Chalon-sur-Saône and Beaune. The Royal-Alu brand on later SIF paperwork goes back to this line. In March 1926 seven shareholders brought a separate aluminium household goods business into SIF, based at 25 rue de la Banque in Chalon-sur-Saône and until then run under the name of G. Juillet as "Aluminium Abeille", trading under the Royal Alu mark. SIF continued the brand under its own name.

The Jouets de Paris factory at Montreuil was rebuilt after the 1909 fire. It produced tin toys ranging from soldiers and animals to trains, cars, planes and household miniatures, with a catalogue of some 300 references at its peak. The brand name shifted from JP to J de P and then to JEP. The best-known lines were the mechanical and electric trains of the 1920s and 1930s, among them the Train Bleu of 1925 and the Flèche d'Or of 1928, and scale automobiles modelled on Hispano-Suiza and Bugatti. The Montreuil factory closed in 1964. JEP was liquidated in 1968. In 1950 SIF became the majority shareholder in another toy manufacturer, Manufacture Parisienne d'Articles de Luxe.

In early 1924 SIF fitted out a separate Paris site at 66-68 rue Vitruve. The workshops there covered cold stamping and pressing of metals, acid pickling to strip metal surfaces, hot tinning of iron by immersion in molten metal, and kiln-fired varnishing. An environmental and nuisance inquiry into the new works was under way at the time.

In 1928 SIF took over the lease and purchase rights to a Paris toy works at 58 rue de la Glacière, previously run by Établissements A. Garnier, a family firm making mechanical toys and children's prams. The transfer took effect on 1 July 1928 and was arranged with Charles-Adolphe Garnier's heirs after his death. It gave SIF a second toy-making site in Paris alongside Montreuil.

In early 1924 SIF fitted out a separate Paris site at 66-68 rue Vitruve with several specialised workshops: cold stamping and pressing of metals, acid pickling to strip metal surfaces, hot tinning of iron by immersion in molten metal, and kiln-fired varnishing. An environmental and nuisance inquiry into the new works was under way at the time.

In 1928 SIF took over the lease and purchase rights to a Paris toy works at 58 rue de la Glacière, previously run by the Établissements A. Garnier, a family firm making "jouets mécaniques et voitures d'enfants" (mechanical toys and children's prams). The transfer, effective 1 July 1928, was arranged with Charles-Adolphe Garnier's heirs after his death, adding a second toy-making site in Paris alongside the JEP works at Montreuil.

The hurricane lanterns sold under the SIF name were originally made by Établissement du Val d'Or, a separate manufacturer that later moved into tool making. After 1930 the Val d'Or range continued under the SIF brand.

Catalogues from that period list the SIF 500, 501, 502 and 502bis as "Anciens modèles Val d'Or". The same catalogue page shows the SIF 400 and the smaller Beaunoise 300 and Export 200, all made at the Beaune factory and fitted with the same 7-line copper burner.
More information about Val d'Or can be found on the next page:

After the takeover, L'Étincelante, Le Phébus and La Lumineuse no longer appear in the catalogues. The Val d'Or range replaced them and are sold together with the La Beaunoise.

The Royalux uses a patented lifting mechanism built into the carrying handle instead of a conventional glass lift. Folding the handle over raises the glass chimney and exposes the wick. It can be done with one hand.

SIF protected the mechanism in France and in Germany. The French patent FR 986.806 was filed on 21 March 1949 and published on 6 August 1951. The German patent DE 808 823 runs from 21 March 1950. SIF added a further German patent to it, DE 974 145, claiming priority from a French application of 15 September 1950. That one was granted in 1951 and published in 1960.

The addition moves the lifting linkage inside the chimney. The ends of the carrying handle pass through slots into the chimney, where they are cranked and joined by a sleeve. A hooked V-bracket hinged at the foot of the chimney does the lifting. Nothing protrudes to be damaged in transport or to admit stray air.
The same document sets out how the glass is held on the moving chimney by a sprung clip running in a groove. Royalux glass has a grooved upper rim and is not interchangeable with standard lantern glass.

The German manufacturer ASA filed a patent for a comparable mechanism at almost the same time, reaching the same result by a different technical route.
SIF registered the lantern's design with the INPI on 3 April 1951.

A surviving instruction leaflet was printed in French, English and Spanish side by side. The three languages point to a sales strategy aimed at export. That is an inference from the leaflet itself; no source states it. The leaflet claims a 76% reduction in wick consumption compared with earlier designs. Lighting and glass removal are each explained step by step with numbered diagrams. The leaflet is not in my own collection; but can be found on scherning.de.

In July 1939 SIF honoured four long-serving employees at Solre-le-Château with the Médaille d'honneur du travail. Mme Scouflaire-Cloutier had been a press operator since 1900. Fernand Fiévet, a tinsmith, joined in April 1908. Degrelle, a specialised labourer, had 47 years at the plant. Bouvier, a former sales representative with over fifty years of service, received the gold medal in absentia after his retirement. The director, M. Duez, handed each recipient an envelope with a gift from the board.
Degrelle and Bouvier had started in the 1880s or early 1890s, at the Villers ferblanterie that was folded into SIF in 1899. Degrelle was born in 1881, so he was about eleven when he began.

A company letterhead of April 1943 lists Orléans among the factories, the first mention in the material gathered here. The site goes back further. In August 1939 the Mayor of Orléans opened a public-nuisance inquiry into an application by M. Boyard, then president of SIF's board of directors, to build a works at 7 rue Vuieille-Lever for cold metalworking and kiln varnishing. The other factories at that point were Solre-le-Château, Chalon-sur-Saône, Beaune, Montreuil-sous-Bois and Fresnes.

A letterhead of 17 October 1952 still lists Orléans, with commercial matters for the Chalon-sur-Saône and Beaune plants centralised in Chalon. By that date SIF was also using the brand name Royal-Alu for its pure aluminium ware.

In May 1950 burglars broke into the Beaune factory overnight and forced open the safe. They took 120,000 francs. The safe was rarely used and the theft went unnoticed for several days. One night earlier it had held the full staff payroll of 800,000 francs, paid out on 11 May. Police opened an investigation. The fingerprints on the safe were too smudged to use, mixed with those of the cleaning lady and the locksmiths called in afterwards.

The board of directors in 1947 consisted of C. Bonnet as president, J. Boyard as vice-president, and Gaston and Léon Juillet, R. Monvoisin, J. Patriarche, R. Pierre and Mme P. Villers as members. Bonnet had signed a company notice to the Chalon workforce as administrateur-secrétaire in February 1901 and was still leading the board 46 years later. Both Juillet brothers were still on it decades after their family's founding contribution in 1899.

Mme P. Villers was probably the widow of Paul Villers, a Solre-le-Château man and SIF board member. Paul Villers died suddenly in Paris in March 1935, aged 46. He was the son-in-law of Henri Grard, a Nord general councillor. Any relation to founder Jules Villers is not established.
In January 1958 the company had five factories: Solre-le-Château, Beaune, Chalon-sur-Saône, Orléans and Montreuil-sous-Bois. Fresnes was no longer among them. The share capital was 48,840,000 francs, and a 1948 bond issue was still being amortised through 1978.

SIF ceased all toy production in 1968 and kept ownership of the JEP trademark. Filings under the SIF name in the INPI patent records taper off around the same year. What became of SIF's own household goods and lantern production after that point is not established from the sources at hand.

The SIF name did not disappear. What happened between 1958 and the early 1980s is an open question. Trademark records at the INPI show an unbroken chain of renewals by the original société anonyme, filed from its historic Paris address: a registration renewed on 21 May 1964, renewed again on 16 May 1979, and renewed a third time on 28 April 1989. Each renewal is under the name Société Industrielle de Ferblanterie, 39 Boulevard Beaumarchais, the address the company had held since at least 1909.

By 1989 manufacturing had moved elsewhere. A business under the name SIF Unis France Lemasson was constituted in Paris on 1 January 1982, formed by merging the SIF, Lemasson and Unis France names. It began operating from Prouvy (Nord) on 1 December 1984 and was renamed SIF Unis France in October 1995. From 1993 it was based at Iwuy, near Cambrai, making baking tins, roasting pans and other kitchenware. Whether this 1982 entity was a direct legal continuation of the 1899 company, or a later revival of the SIF name and trademark, is not established from the sources at hand.

Court-supervised administration was opened on 25 October 2023. Staff carried on much as before, since a buyer appeared to be in place. Jean-Noël Verfaillie, a local mayor and departmental councillor, had come forward with his wife. They intended to revive French production and move the range upmarket, away from the supermarket trade. Verfaillie had already put roughly 100,000 euros of his own money into the firm: some 70,000 on a shipment of steel, because SIF had run out of cash, and a further 30,000 in legal and expert fees.
On 12 December, at half past nine in the evening, he told the managing director, Pierre Seren-Rosso, that he would not be going ahead. He gave no explanation at the time. He said later that he had been warned he would lose his savings before he could get the business running again. He did not appear at the hearing the next day. On 13 December 2023 the commercial court of Douai converted the proceedings into a judicial liquidation. The 27 remaining employees lost their jobs.

Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
INPI — data.inpi.fr
Musée de l'histoire vivante, Montreuil, and the Mérimée heritage dossier (IA93000070)
BnF Catalogue général and data.bnf.fr
Societe.com, Pappers and BODACC
La Voix du Nord
Original SIF trade catalogues, 1930–1933 (private collection)
Scherning.de — Royalux info, courtesy of Jörg Wekeman
Wikipedia (French) — JEP (entreprise)