MeerschaumStore (MeerQueen)

MeerschaumStore is a Turkish meerschaum pipe business producing in Eskişehir. It names its pipes under the MeerQueen brand; it entered the community's memory, however, under the name of the sales site it opened in 1999. In reference sources the name is sometimes rendered with dropped letters, as "MeershcumStore Inc." The structure rests not on a single master's bench but on a workshop arrangement that gathers the work of staff carvers under one brand.

Founding Year and Conflicting Records

By the business's own account, the workshop was founded in 1963 by a family elder surnamed Uzkesici. The company uses this date consistently in its own publications with the phrase "Est. 63"; retailer promotions also note the fiftieth anniversary being marked in 2013. Two separate traces converge on the same year, yet the founding date has not been confirmed by an official record such as a trade registry.

The Pipedia record based on José Manuel Lopes's compilation, by contrast, ties the founding to 1908 and directly to Bahadır Baykal, writing that the business then passed to his son Kural. Neither this date nor this sequence has been confirmed in another source; Baykal is cited as the business's current manager rather than its founder. That the name "Kural" exists as a carver's stamp in the Turkish meerschaum trade can be seen from the listing of pieces bearing this signature in estate pipe catalogs; the relationship of the stamp to this particular record is unclear. Because the sources conflict, 1963 is taken as the baseline here, and 1908 is treated as unconfirmed information.

Workshop and Masters

The company states it works with twelve carvers; on its official site it names six of them as master carvers: Tekin Gök, İsmail Bağlan, Ramazan Bağlan, Medet Kara, Mehmet Başsav, and Salim Şener. According to the same promotional material, Tekin Gök leads the staff, and the top-tier pieces come from his hand. The business has for some time been run by Bahadır "Cem" Baykal, who, according to the same promotional material, holds a degree in engineering physics.

This arrangement sits somewhere between an artisan workshop and factory production: the pipes are hand-carved and bear the signature of the carver, but the brand identity rests not on a single person's style but on the staff as a whole. The raw material is block stone from the region that has fed Eskişehir meerschaum carving for centuries; the business states it does not work with material obtained by pressing meerschaum chips with a binder.

Product Range and Access

The pipes are divided into three tiers named Silver, Gold, and Diamond. The division rests on a scale in which both the raw stone and the craftsmanship are scored out of six; the top tier is shown as "6/6." Construction uses a Teflon push-fit joint and an acrylic stem in place of the traditional screw thread favored on briar pipes; a 9 mm filter socket is opened when requested. The finished pipe is saturated with several successive coats of natural beeswax. Details of the series and the carving repertoire are covered in the MeerQueen entry.

The business states it reaches more than one hundred and eighty countries and offers a lifetime warranty on the meerschaum body. These statements have not been independently audited; even so, MeerschaumStore is counted among the oldest internet addresses through which Turkish meerschaum production opened itself to the outside world.