F. Van Laere cues (Belgium):

The Van Laere billiard house, founded in 1896, was located in Brussels.

It manufactured reputed billiard tables, balls and cues for almost a century. Cue butts were in one or more pieces. Numerous woods were used (most of them are mentioned in Section L) except for the shafts and their screws which were usually in sycamore.

Here are some butts which are practically all carved and adorned with inlays (for more details, see Sections C and L):

a. stamped with 'L VAN LAERE' (the oldest ones)

1 to 8

9
Adorned with mother-of-pearl inlays and a carved bird whose head is shown below.

10 to 16
Butts a6, a11, a12 and a15 belong to Van Laere models No. 47, 32 (widespread '4-point' model from the 1960s), 48 and 70, respectively. More details on butts a6, a8, a12 and a15 are given in Section C.

17
with the old green Van Laere decal

(see Section L).

18

19

20 to 22

Butt models a21 and a15 are the same but their woods are different.

The butt below

23

is similar to butts a4-a6 with addtional green decal and white medallion.

24

25

b. stamped with 'MADE BY VAN LAERE'

1 à 5

c. not stamped

1 to 4

5
Rare '2-stage 4-point' model.

6

7

Butts c1 and c6 are those of Van Laere models No. 33 and 'Ready', respectively.

d. St-Michel

The most successful model, named 'St-Michel' (registered trademark), was the one with a 'bottle' shape. Some specimens manufactured between about 1920 and 1980 are shown below. They are classified according to their approximate ages. The oldest one is No 1.. the oldest one is Nr.

1 to 6

7 to 13

The inlays of butts d1 to d3 are made of ivory.
The escutcheons from d4 to d6 are mother-of-pearl and are larger.
Butt d7 is similar to d6 but is more recent.
Inlays d8 are mother-of-pearl and orange plastic.
Those of d9 to d11 are only plastic that is sometimes white.
In d12 and d13, they are made of false mother-of-pearl; escutcheons
are not at the same place and carvings are more elaborate than the
previous ones (rings).

The identification of some cues has been made possible thanks to the help of Rolande Van Laere and John Van den Branden.

The St-Michel shafts were 'common' sycamore maple but sometimes also 'tiger' ('curly') or 'bird's eye' sycamore maple..

.
'bird's eye' and 'tiger' ('curly')


'tiger' ('curly')


'common'

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