Koncak

Koncak is a brand that works meerschaum in block form in Eskişehir and is counted among the country's oldest makers of finished pipes. According to records in the pipe literature, the business was founded in 1934 by Ekrem Konçak. The family name is written on pipes and boxes in the Latinized form "Koncak," dropping the Turkish diacritic. What sets the brand apart from the city's other workshops is that, at the end of the twentieth century, it took over the rights to a Vienna-based European brand.

Founding and Family Generations

In the years the factory was founded, Eskişehir meerschaum carving relied largely on small workshops, with a significant share of the extracted stone sent raw to Europe. The business founded by the Konçak family became one of the select firms that processed the stone domestically and sold it abroad as a finished product; over time it came to be regarded among the regular suppliers to the German tobacco trade.

Management stayed within the family across generations. According to the same records, Ekrem Konçak's son Sedat Konçak took over in 1974, and the company's day-to-day management passed to the founder's daughter in 1980; her name is given in sources as "Nurham." Since both dates rest on a single compilation, they cannot be considered confirmed against official commercial records.

Taking Over the Andreas Bauer Brand

In the early 1970s Türkiye banned the export of raw meerschaum abroad; the aim was to keep carving and its added value within the country. This decision left European workshops working with block stone without raw material. The Andreas Bauer brand, founded in Vienna in 1906 by Andreas Bauer and run from 1942 by the founder's son Ernst Bauer, could not overcome this shortage either. The brand rights passed first to Otto & Kopp, which distributed meerschaum pipes to German tobacconists, and then to Sedat Konçak in 1990. So pipes carrying the Vienna name began to be carved in Eskişehir.

Collector sources state that the "Made in Austria" mark was retained on boxes prepared after the transfer. To distinguish Vienna-era examples from later ones, collectors look less at the stamp than at construction details: early pipes used a genuine amber stem and a bone screw fitting, while the later period used amberoid or acrylic stems with a delrin push fitting. The differences between these materials are covered in the entry on stem materials.

Pipes and Distinguishing Features

Koncak's output was not confined to classic pipe shapes; the brand is also known for non-standard, figural shapes. One example examined in restoration write-ups shows leaf reliefs running along the bowl and shank, a reclining Pegasus figure on the front, a twisted-pattern silver band, and a box with the brand's crest sewn onto the interior lining. These details rest not on manufacturer catalogs but on observations drawn from individually examined pipes.

There is no verifiable current information about the company's present activity. Even so, the brand continues to be recognized in the estate market as one of the known names of twentieth-century Turkish meerschaum production.