What a nice purchase! This exact form, the woman 'swimming' under a bowl carved as a flower or leaves, isn't uncommon as a subject with antique meerschaums; I've seen a few over the years. It's definitely an 1880s-1890s pipe; fully-figural designs lost favor around 1900 or so. It's likely, but not certain, that this pipe was colored with vegetable dyes (oxblood, dragon's blood, etc.) to give it coloration, as were many at that time, and the buyer's actual use of the pipe caused it to wear off, giving the two-tone look.
On most antique pipes having that horn-shaped insert, it wasn't a coloring bowl, but was for smoking a cigar or cheroot/cigarillo. The inside diameter will tell you which. S. Yanik makes new pipes which come with two inserts, a bowl and a cigar holder. It seems silly to a modern smoker to smoke a cigar with it pointing vertically, but holders of the late 1800s often pointed it vertically or diagonally upward-and-outward (Missouri Meerschaum's 1909 catalog shows miniature straight corncobs with reed stems for use as cigar holders, as well as straight cob cigar 'tubes').
On most antique pipes having that horn-shaped insert, it wasn't a coloring bowl, but was for smoking a cigar or cheroot/cigarillo. The inside diameter will tell you which. S. Yanik makes new pipes which come with two inserts, a bowl and a cigar holder. It seems silly to a modern smoker to smoke a cigar with it pointing vertically, but holders of the late 1800s often pointed it vertically or diagonally upward-and-outward (Missouri Meerschaum's 1909 catalog shows miniature straight corncobs with reed stems for use as cigar holders, as well as straight cob cigar 'tubes').
