Hand Crafted Eskisehir, Turkey Meerschaum Chillum with Fitted Case

Hand Crafted Eskisehir, Turkey Meerschaum Chillum - Highest quality block meerschaum - Comes with elegant fitted Case Meerschaum is a very rare mineral, a kind of hard white clay. Light and porous structure of the pipe keeps the smoke cool and soft. The pipe itself is a natural filter which absorbs the nicotine. Because of this peculiarity, meerschaum pipes slowly change their colors to different tones of gold and dark brown. This adds an esthetic enjoyment to its great smoking pleasure. "Meerschaum" is a German word meaning literally, "sea-foam,. Meerschaum is a hydrated magnesium silicate. Magnesium does not make it strong and the hydrogen and oxygen do not make it cool. It is the crystalline structure; the arrangement of the magnesium, silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in a rigid crystalline structure that makes sepiolite (the clay mineral that is identified by pipe smokers as meerschaum) so good for smoking. The average size of the meerschaum blocks extracted from the clay is about the size of a grapefruit. Meerschaum deposits of the highest quality are found only in one place in the world - in the small city of Eskisehir in central Turkey. And here the deposits are confined to an area of only 4 square miles. Mined with hand tools, and by men trained in this singular family tradition, meerschaum is excavated at depths ranging from 200 to 300 feet.