Blake Lockhart, a member of ClubStogie.com's Forum, wrote up a great series of posts all about Meerschaum Pipes. I didn't learn a whole lot new but it is a really good introduction to not only the care and feeding of your new meerschaum pipe, but also some information about how the pipes are made as well as some good tips on coloring your pipe.

You can find most of this information in the Tobacco-Barn.com website but it is nice to see another person out there stoking the fires of the brothers of the meerschaum!

 I recently got a link to this posting via my Google Alert that I've got set up for mentions of newly-index postings of "meerschaum": 

Every morning he smokes a pipe, and this is a sight to behold. In a city where new smoking-ordinances have outlawed the leaf that financed early-America (tobacco leaves are indeed carved in columns on the Capitol building) in bars, restaurants and offices, the old man stands out as a counter culture relic. His age is defies death already; his pipe dares it. If I weren't so chicken of dying an early death of some sort of cancerous suffocation, I would join him. I would break out my Meerschaum pipe, as white as that old man's hair and purchased (with the help of a more barter-savvy friend) in Turkey's Grand Bazaar. I'd watch the beautiful purples of morning turn to gold while breathing in the taste of Virginia's soil. I would warm my hands with the bowl of my pipe and watch the many flavored residents of Washington DC walk hurried and harried to work.

The writing and observations in most of this post were quite enjoyable. I do, however, have to take exceptions to this blogger's insistence on lumping all smoking in with the dangers of cigarette smoking. They describe themselves as a social smoker which I would agree is definitely better than being an addict huffing tobacco through his "sissy-stick" (cigarette) in an attempt to get their nicotine fix.

Responsible pipe smokers, and cigar smokers for that matter, are not addicts, nor does their action significantly shorten their lives like regular cigarette smoking does. Quite the opposite, the infamous 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking included statements that pipe smokers tended to live longer than the general population. An update of this report issued in 1979 indicated that perhaps pipe smoking increased the mortality ratio fractionally when compared to non-smokers except for "light" smokers (4 or fewer bowls a day) who had a lower mortality rate than non-smokers.

But back to the post at hand... Very nice slice of life writing but while they seem to be warning against too much PC in the tone of the posting, I would strongly recommend that responsible pipe/cigar smokers not perpetuate the blurring of the line between their passion and the evil and dangers of cigarette addiction that non-smokers tend to confuse. We should all know better!

To expound article on coloring of Meerschaum pipes that can be found here, I thought I'd offer up this beautiful example of a well colored meerschaum pipe. This is the story of a beautiful meerschaum pipe that has been in constant use for over 140 years. Click on the title above to see the full story.

For those who don't frequent the Pipe Lore blog, you should check out his posting titled Chicago 2007 by Cornell Vermeulen. While you are there, you should cruise through other postings on this site as there are some great articles there. Lars Wilberg has a fun posting on The Leatherman of the Pipe World (parts 1 and 2) that I also enjoyed.

Looking for a great deal on a new, old pipe? Well, we've got just what you are looking for! We recently came across a good sized stock of Linea 76 pipes from Savinelli that are new and in their original boxes, complete with the beautiful gold pipe bag with the Savinelli stamped on it.

The Savinelli Linea 76 were manufactured in 1976 to celebration the Savinelli's 100th anniversary. These Lineas are of similar grade to the Punto Oro grades of today and are mix of sandblast and smooth in 6 different shapes (almost, we don't have a smooth in the 06 shape). The smooths are a pleasure to view, many with exquisite flame patterns and birdseye grain.

You can't beat the price either. Why buy a run of the mill pipe for $100 or worse yet, pay $65.00 for an estate pipe (as we've seen this pipe advertised) when you can get that new pipe excitement for this low price? When these pipes were new in 1976 they sold around $80 to $90 each.

If you are like me, you have a favorite Zippo lighter case that you are attached to. When I made the transition from cigars to also smoke a pipe, I bought a new Zippo pipe lighter and swapped the insert into the old case.

Not a perfect solutions (cause I was still messing around with smelly old Zippo fuel) until a recent conversation with James, the president of KGM lighters. He had indicated that he would be willing to let us sell their butane lighter inserts (both pipe and regular flame) for flip-top lighters like the Zippo or their Thunderbird lighters.

I got one and gave it a try and wow, just fell in love immediately. The fit and finish are perfect, it lights my trusty meerschaum pipe cleanly and without the stink associated with liquid fuel and more importantly, this baby is backed by a LIFETIME WARRANTY from the manufacturer!

Stick that in your lighter case and flick it!

Dawn came early Saturday morning, or so it seemed. Tom and I trudged off the MegaCenter to get set up for the day.

We kind of underestimated how much space (or how little actually) existed on top of an 8 foot table. We were able to cram most of the stuff we bought on the table but had to hold some stuff back, hoping that we could free up space for Sunday by sales today.

 

Shortly after getting everything set up and arranged the sales started. We started selling to vendors an hour or two before the actual show opened. Meanwhile, potential customers were anxiously lining up waiting to get into the show.

Of course, once the doors opened, people began flocking in and the air became thick with the aroma of pipe smoke.

Given the competition for buyer's attention, I think we did ok but next year I feel that we should probably get two booths and devote one exclusively to Meerschaum products. It was good to see that we actually sold a couple of briars though. Hopefully people will be more likely to pull the trigger tomorrow. We definitely saw an upswing in action the closer we got to closing.

Today we sold today:

• all 5 of our Butane Pipe Lighter Inserts
• Sevket floral pipe
• Kaiser Wilhem meerschaum pipe with windscreen cap
• Estate Barling Pot
• Meerschaum bent panel pipe
• Estate Charatan Billiard #3102

James, one of our customers from the Barn and an up and coming pipe carver (we and he hopes) help out in passing out carver flyers about the PipeTrader.com site. This helped me hit up a number of potential carvers while I spent time either at the table or talking up the project with carvers exhibiting at the show.

Had an interesting discussion today with a company that is working with P&T magazine to create an application that talks directly to the upcoming P&T magazine website and, I believe, other sources as well. We began talks about carving out API's in our auction house technology to accept listings from their application to simplify postings as well as some other hooks. Got a lot of talking and programming to do before the release of PipeTrader.com.

Instead of attending the Cigar Dinner, we are going to be going out to dinner with the group of customers that ventured out to the show. I'll tell you more about this tomorrow. Gotta run out the door and eat some Chicago pizza so we'll type later!

Last night at our After Dinner Sale, we sold 4 big meerschaum pieces (a Baglan floral elephant, an Ekrem sultan, an Ekrem floral apple and a Sevket claw) as well as 10 of "The Pipe" pipes. Well, technically we sold 9 of "The Pipe"s and threw one in to sweeten the pot to get a client to buy two meerschaum pieces instead of trying to decide on just one.

Not a bad night's work considering how far off the beaten path this hotel room is. We had posted flyers on all the bulletin boards about it but I truly think all the action was in the tower rooms. This seems to be where all the carvers set up shop and people just go from room to room, entering any they see with an open door (could be interesting in people aren't careful).

The CPCC is dedicated to ensuring that they will have this show next year despite the likelyhood that Illinois will be enacting rather strict (read draconian) anti-smoking legislation. It appears that management of the hotel have also indicated that they want this show to happen next year. As such, we'll probably be reserving a table (or two) as well as a room in the tower for next year.

Perhaps if I'm really lucky, we'll get a room facing the DuPage airport; a pretty darn large general aviation airport. Nothing better than watching corporate jets and light airplanes doing landing practice outside your window. No really, I'm not kidding. I would totally dig it!

Here are some pictures of the pipes that sold:

The Ekrem sultan that sold.

 
The Sevket claw pipe.

I guess I don't have pictures of the floral elephant from Baglan or the Ekrem floral apple but trust me, they were spectacular and the buyers got a great deal.

Ironically enough, the guys who bought 3 of the Meerschaums (one bought two and one bought another pipe) are planning on opening up a pipe/cigar shop with lounge in their hometown in the very near future. We discussed the possibility of calling us (IK Meerschaum) about selling meerschaum to them wholesale. We wish them the best of luck in getting their new business off the ground.

Quote of the day: "You probably won't believe this, or perhaps you will, these were left in my bag from the Turkey trip" says our mixmaster Tom holding up a pair of obviously dirty socks from our Turkey trip in February...

The evening was spent going from room to room in the hotel as many carvers and retailers had set up little mini pipe shows in their room. I didn't spend as much time "prowling" as I would have liked as I was continuing to do work on the blog sites as well as continuing to move forward on the auction/classifieds/trading site that is the core of PipeTrader.

Tom found a Dunhill pipe that he liked enough to purchase. Hey Tom, I thought we were here to sell pipes, not buy pipes. Our pipes should arrive today via UPS so we'll set up an after dinner sale in our room.

Here's some photos from the "pre-show" sales that happened today (Friday):

 
Looking over the floor shortly after opening

One of our regulars, James, a budding carver, puruses a vendor's wares.

Another customer Marty chats with another vendor.

Here's a shot of the in-room setup for our after dinner sale:

These are the higher end pipes. Note the ironing board as show surface. Any flat surface will do.

The middle piece is a Dunhill Space Shuttle. You'll notice a small pipe attached to the shank of the main pipe much like the space shuttle riding atop a 747 enroute back to  Florida from Edwards air base.

As I said, any flat surface will do.

This is our estate Dunhill and Savinelli display case.

And here is our Meerschaum and miscellaneous case.

 
I'm not sure where we found these but "The Pipe" dates from the late sixties to early 70's and is made of "space age materials" used in the development of the Polaris Missle!

I'm off to the dinner now so more for you all tomorrow!

MJG

 

Side note: Interesting Link of the day... Saw reference to this video in Wired magazine on the flight out and thought I'd link it here in case anyone cares to watch it. Very well done piece on Web 2.0 titled "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us".

We, (in this case our IK Meerschaum division) are proud to announce that we will be introducing our Greenman line of hand-carved Meerschaum Pipes at the Chicago Pipe Show. These pipes will celebrate these symbols of man's integration with nature in a 3 dimensional manner.

Greenmen are designs that, while commonly associated with northern Europe, can be found as design elements in architecture around the world. They generally feature a human face surrounded or integrating with natural symbols like wind, leaves, vines, snakes, etc. To learn more about the Greenman line of pipes and the history of the Greenman, you can visit http://GreenmanPipes.com/.

The Greenman line will include 5 different designs in two different grades of fine Meerschaum. The two grades include Deluxe and Specials; the latter being carved and signed by the famed Emin brothers from Turkey while the former will be carved by artists from IK Meerschaum's workshop in Eskisehir, Turkey.

The first of the five designs is the Greenman himself. This pipe is a figurehead with strong features surrounded by symbols of his power and unity with the world. One might think of him as "Father Nature".

The next design would be that of Lady Green. She would be "Mother Nature" of a softer kind, with delicate features surrounded by a spray of flowers woven in her gorgeous mane. This is another figurehead style pipe where her head, hair and flowers comprise the sizeable bowl.

The third design is a sitting pipe called Windy (or "Blow hard" if you are more irreverent). The name derives from the impression of him as the source of all wind, sending leaves flowing from his mouth and sweeping around the sides of his face (and the bowl).

The fourth design is of the Trickster. This mischievous face is rendered as a medallion on the front of a pipe bowl, perhaps making him more akin to the Greenmen as they are used as architectural accents. You might just find on some of these, that he is winking at you, perhaps sharing a joke on the sly.

Finally, we have Fritz. This is another medallion-style Greenman who could be considered the "Old Man of the Woods." His visage is surrounded by vines with snakes and other natural material woven throughout his coarse beard.

As mentioned before, the Special grade are being produced exclusively for IK Meerschaum by the Emin brothers. These world-famous carvers have been featured in publications like Pipes and Tobacco magazine numerous times. There are few carvers alive today who's ability to carve such accurate portrayals of the human face. Their talent and skill with women's faces are unsurpassed. These special signed pieces will surely become collectors items for those with an interest in fine Meerschaum pipes.

If you'd like to see examples of the unsigned, Deluxe grade of pipes, you'll find them at the bottom of the Greenman page on Tobacco Barn.

We will have available at the show limited quantities of these pipes but will be taking orders now for the next shipment of pipes expected summer of 2007. Any of our samples left over after the show will be up for sale at http://www.tobacco-barn.com or in our PipeTrader.com store (coming soon).