Meerschaum

Ok, so most of you know I don't smoke, this is purely for a collector piece, but it was just too cool and how many times am I coming back to the Middle East? (This being the second trip... and none scheduled for the future).

Meerschaum is a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rather suggestive of sea-foam (German: Meerschaum) Most of the meerschaum of commerce is obtained from Asia Minor, chiefly from the plain of Eskişehir, on the Haidar Pasha-Angora railway, 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. The principal workings are at Sepetdji-Odjaghi and Kemikdji-Odjaghi, about 20 miles southeast of Eski-Shehr. The mineral is associated with magnesite (magnesium carbonate), the primitive source of both minerals being a serpentine.










The front. It may be hard to tell for some, but it's a dragon. Since I'm going with an Asian theme, this one seemed to fit.









The back detail...











Close-up of the bowl and the dragon's tail.