All too often, the artists who carved objects for daily uses and pleasures were anonymous to buyers and so to history. Yet, these objects are often of beauty and interest.
One such group of objects are meerschaum pipes, which have been popularized in the modern Western imagination through cinematic depictions of Sherlock Holmes (the meerschaum pipe originated with William Gillette's performance of Holmes on the New York stage at the turn of the 20th century, per the Encyclopedia Britannica Online).
Typical designs for meerschaum pipes are dominated by masculine subjects, as they were crafted for men's use. These included animals (especially dogs, horses, and predatory birds) and people (many busts, but some full-bodied, especially of society people, sailors, and pretty ladies), with a strong subcurrent of erotics / nudes (many of these, predictably, made in France); colonial subjects, such as safari animals, African kings, slaves, and Sultans; wilderness themes; and elaborate seafaring and architectural subjects. The bowls were also, in some more economical instances, polished smooth or carved in relief with vineyard and other agricultural images. German and Austrian variants include the meerclaw, in which a long stem ends in an eagle claw that holds the pipe's bowl and the silver capped "stein" model. Commemorative / memorial pipes were also sometimes produced. Stems are traditionally of amber, but may also have been carved of soapstone or hardwood.
Meerschaum yellows and browns with smoke.
( Read more... )Meerschaum itself is a naturally occuring substance, a soft mineral (hydrous magnesium silicate), resembling ivory or soapstone, that hardens when exposed to the sun or left to dry in a warm area.
Per the
wiki, "Meerschaum is a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rather suggestive of sea-foam (German: Meerschaum), whence also the French name for the same substance, ecume de mer. It was termed by E. F. Glocker sepiolite, in allusion to its remote resemblance to the bone of the sepia or cuttlefish. Meerschaum is opaque and of white, grey or cream color, breaking with a conchoidal or fine earthy fracture, and occasionally though rarely, fibrous in texture. It can be readily scratched with the nail, its hardness being about 2...
Meerschaum is found also, though less abundantly, in Greece, as at Thebes, and in the islands of Euboea and Samos; it occurs also in serpentine at Hrubschitz near Kromau in Moravia. It is found to a limited extent at certain localities in France and Spain, and is known in Morocco. In the United States it occurs in serpentine in Pennsylvania (as at Nottingham, Chester County) and in South Carolina and Utah."
Vienna was a traditional center for meerschaum carving, although modern day Turkey has taken over this role. After turning and carving, meerschauma artifacts were "smoothed with glass-paper and Dutch rushes, heated in wax or stearine, and finally polished with bone-ash."
