About Meerschaum Smoking Pipes
Meerschaum is opaque and of white, grey or cream color, breaking with a conchoidal or fine earthy fracture, and occasionally fibrous in texture. Because it can be readily scratched with the nail, its hardness is placed at about 2.
Most of the meerschaum of commerce is obtained from Asia Minor, chiefly from the plain of Eskisehirin Turkey, between Istanbul and Ankara, where it occurs in irregular nodular masses, in alluvial deposits, which are extensively worked for its extraction. It is said that in this district there are 4000 shafts leading to horizontal galleries for extraction of the meerschaum.
When smoked, Meerschaum pipes gradually change color, and old Meerschaums will turn incremental shades of yellow, orange, and red from the base on up.
When prepared for use as a pipe, the natural nodules are first scraped to remove the red earthy matrix, then dried, again scraped and polished with wax. The crudely shaped masses thus prepared are turned and carved, smoothed with glass-paper and Dutch rushes, heated in wax or stearine, and finally polished with bone-ash, etc.
Meerschaum products traditionally were made in manufacturing centers such as Vienna. Since the 1970s, though, Turkey has banned the exportation of meerschaum nodules, trying to set up a local meerschaum industry. The once famous manufacturers have therefore disappeared.
Nowadays, meerschaum pipes not obtained from Turkish producers are usually made of pressed meerschaum or African meerschaum, which are inferior in quality. Imitations are made in plaster of paris and other preparations.In selecting a meerschaum pipe it is advisable to take assurances that the product is indeed carved from a block of meerschaum, and is not made from meerschaum dust collected after carving and mixed with an emulcifier then pressed into a pipe shape. These products are not absorbent, do not color, and lack the smoking quality of the block carved pipe. (Wikipedia)