Smoking a Meershaum Without Knowing It!?

[rosney]

So a while back I bought 5 or 6 pipes at a sale and brought them home. All but one had been smoked. The one unsmoked pipe looked a little unusual to me. It was very light color and looked to be stained black around the top. All I could see that it said was Thompson on the side. After a quick googling I determined that it was just a cheap cigar store pipe. I loaded it up with some Frog Morton Cellar and smoked away, not being too careful. To my suprise the thing smoked GREAT! In fact I have had only great smokes with it no matter the tobacco. Tonight I finally had it and wanted to get to the bottom of why it smoked so nicely, other than just chalking it up to cellar is that good. It in fact says THOMPSON in print just like that on the side. On the underside there is a smooth spot and the wording is really hard to read. I put it under the light tonight and got quite a suprise! It says GT Britain Genuine Block Meershaum!! Have I really been smoking a meershaum this whole time and been ignorant to it?? I guess I should have known when I saw that the stem connects to a metal piece that goes into the pipe. Does anyone have any info on these? I cant find much.

 

[petes03]

That's a nice looking meer! Just a guess, but judging by the way it's made, I'd say it's probably African block. Other than that I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure some of the more knowledgable "meer" guys will.

 

[dervis]

Great buy. A stunning pipe indeed

 

[pitchfork]

GT Britain? I know there was a company on the Isle of Man that made meerschaum pipes, mainly using African block. It could be one of those.
The same company made Barling and Peterson's meerschaum pipes, so maybe they made ones for "Thompson." Would that be the cigar company? Maybe it was just a tobacco shop, like Tinder Box or Astley, that had private label pipes made for them.

 

[sablebrush52]

It's made by Comoy. That is African block meerschaum. The later Barling meers are made from the same stuff. When I first saw this picture, I thought that it might be a Barling, until I read your description. It looks exactly the same as the post family meerschaum pipes. But a check in "Who Made That Pipes?" yielded the Comoy name.
Nice find!