Show Off Your Antique Meerschaums!

[condorlover1]

I have to agree with ae1pt as I have a 'cutty' shown in the first photograph posted, third pipe down from the top with a similar colored stem. The silver banding dates the pipe to around 1922 and was not a repair but part of the pipes style when made. You can normally spot the amber stems a mile away as they have no recesses in the mouth pieces and are simply a straight hole drilled through the stem.

 

[xrundog]

The other thing that should be considered is that with older amberoid stemmed pipes the original stem may have been replaced with a Bakelite stem. I have (and have had) a number of briars stamped as amber that have Bakelite stems. I've had some meerschaums that seemed older in style that had bakelite stems. It's pretty easy to break the amberoid. I've broken a few with very little effort. And I've bought a number of them that had broken stems. But I have never had a broken, or broken myself, a Bakelite stem. I imagine they can be broken. But it takes quite a lot to do so. Even an unsmoked pipe with an amberoid stem usually has little chips at the sharp edges. A Bakelite stem nornally doesn't have these chips.

 

[xrundog]

This is an interesting discussion. The earliest pipes I have with amberoid stems don't have round holes at the bit. The have a big chunky bit with a football (or eye) shaped opening. The pre-colored pipe above is like that. And I have a WDC with the 1889 Paris Exposition medallions stamped in the case that has the same style mouthpiece. I'm not saying this style is earlier. It might be contemporary to the round hole bits. Maybe it depends on the company and where they got their stems from. English pipes may have had all orificial bits. I don't know, I buy mostly the American brands.

Here's the WDC:

 

[beefeater33]

Just bought this one off the 'Bay-- I don't have it in hand yet. The seller advertised it as briar......

I'm not familiar with RBC pipes. I'm not too happy with the hole in the top of the stem, but for $24, I can live with it!

The case is pretty rough too.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-RBC-pipe-/291293759182?nma=true&si=y2tDxKj6nXvor8a5x%252BP51Icj3tQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

[xrundog]

RBC is Reiss Briar Co. They later merged with Premier and were even later bought by S.M Frank. So an RBC is probably an early 20s or sooner pipe. Looks like Meerschaum to me. The rim cap and band look smooth and nice! That's a replacement Lucite stem. I might have said amber colored Bakelite, but the bit profile is all wrong. It's modern. Looks pretty good though. Clean that up and fix the hole with Super Glue and I think you'll be pretty happy with it.

 

[beefeater33]

Thanks xrundog!

 

[xrundog]

Here's an amber or amberoid body and stem pipe with a screw on meerschaum bowl. I've had a few others like this and Though the screw replaceable bowl pipes were pretty much offered constantly from the late 19th century to now, I think this specific style dates from the 1880s-1910. The drawback is that the meerschaum threads were easily stripped. The later models have a threaded mineral or metal base integral to the bowl.

 

[condorlover1]

I have come across these in my travels and the threads are very fragile and are worse in some cases than the threaded stems on the older 'cutty' pipes. I saw one once that must have been the inspiration for the Falcon pipe and was a gift to a retiring engineer with the GWR in 1907 - I didn't buy it as the dealer wanted about $30 for it and that was about 20 years ago when you could buy the style I love to smoke for about Five Pounds each.

 

[xrundog]

They aren't popular. I had a really nice straight bulldog style, in it's case. The case was stamped by an old Milwaukee tobacconist. Threads were good, it was in beautiful shape after I cleaned it. I sold it at auction on ebay for $30. I expected to get 4 times that. I bought the one above with the minimum bid. I'm not surprised to see dirty ones go cheap. They take some experience to work on and have them come out right.

 

[condorlover1]

@xrundog I saw a couple of interesting jobs on Oi Vay today and put up a thread on it alerting people to a couple of cased meerschaum pipes. Like all offers one lot had a busted amber-lite stem which are the devils own work to get replaced. I have seen a few attempts at doing these stems and the only guy who can get it right is Tim West and I don't know of anyone in the UK doing this type of work after 20 years down here in the colonies! Funnily enough I keep coming across what look like metal shirt buttons in the bottom of 'cutty' style pipes. They seem to act as a strange type of primitive screen and you can play merry hell trying to pull them out of the bowls. Its the use of these damned things that give you the two toned coloring seen on some of my pipes. The worst offenders are the silver three penny pieces on the smaller bowls as I always find you are confronted with a nasty carbon pellet when you finally extract the coin as the pipe has become a Victorian catalytic converter!

 

[condorlover1]

Tip of the ice burg old boy - you are just looking at my monthly rotation!

 

[condorlover1]

You would be looking at 25 years of buying on average two pipes a month. Recently I have been pensioning off the billiards with a few exceptions to friends on the forum as I only have a couple and everything else are I use are 'cutty' pipes.

 

[metalheadycigarguy]

Most of you have seen this before, but this is my 1962 smooth bent egg from Adana Turkey.

 

[pipejunky]

Hey Condor , did you put the color in most of your pipes or did you buy them like that.

 

[condorlover1]

One or two of them but the majority have come that way due to being heavily smoked by the previous owners in the last 100+ years. As they are all used on a very regular basis I am sure they will continue to color in many different ways!

 

[jonasclark]

Condorlover, you say you're slowly getting rid of non-cutty pipes. You don't happen to have one of those teeny meers that's a straight or apple bowl, thick (usually square) shank, saddle amber bit, usually with a metal band, do you? Last meer I'm looking for in the collection. I've read these little guys were the college pipe of fashion around the turn of the century. I see them on the 'Bay sometimes but usually in rough shape.
Absolutely love the cutty meers! Gorgeous little things. Got a little briar Jeantet cutty and it's my favorite short-term smoke.

 

[condorlover1]

Read your PM

 

[Briar Boy]

Here are a few of mine...

I made new stems for these two:





This one's original amber stem was broken, it's been restemmed in acrylic by Floyd Norwood...

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[xrundog]

Nice job on those stems BriarBoy. They have a very authentic look.

 

[torque]

Just picked this one up fairly cheap. My first meer so will be going through a learning curve on how to care for them. I don't really know when WDC stopped distributing meerschaum pipes so I can't really make a good guess on it's age. Any feedback is appreciated. Using the photo from the auction since it's way better than anything I could do on my end.