Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - Meerschaum Pipes

My stately new Meerschaum pipe

Sometimes I like to enjoy the finer things in life. Having stopped smoking cigarettes I do enjoy a pipe of tobacco with my wine a few times a week. I've been smoking wooden pipes made from briar however I've always fancied the romantic notion of a carved meerschaum pipe.

Meerschaum pipes are made from a mineral known as Magnesium Silicate derived from Bituminus Shale. Meerschaum comes from the German for 'sea foam' in respect that it is white, very light and found on the coast of the sea.

Meerschaum is mined or found in liver shaped lumps covered with hard clay. The lumps are washedto remove the clay, dried for about 10 hours and then graded into sixty different grades of size and quantity. After grading the Meerschaum is waxed, packed in cotton wool and sent to the pipe maker.

The pipe maker must immerse the meerschaum in water for several hours to soften it to a cheese-like consistency prior to carving. After the pipehas been bored and shaped, it is immersed in tallow and beeswax for many hours, then dried and re-waxed. Top grade meerschaum pipes can go through this process eight times. The wax in the meerschaum is the main source of color.

Above is my new meerschaum pipe which I purchased yesterday since the bowl is smaller and sometimes I feel like a small bowl of tobacco while sipping on my red wine.

I felt rather regal with my king style pipe until Elina brought me crashing down to earth by saying it looked like the king in the Burger King ads.

I will show her when I order a self-portrait style pipe;

http://altinokpipe.com/portraitpipe.asp

......................... Of course she'll probably say it's Morrissey, Tom Jones or Englebert Humperdinck.