Yunar Pipe (Yunar Meerschaum)

Yunar Pipe is the workshop of carver Abdülvahap Yunar, working in Eskişehir, and the brand under which the meerschaum pipes made there are sold. In foreign correspondence and on its website, the name appears as "Yunar Meerschaum." Yunar learned the craft from his father and is counted a second-generation carver within the family; since production is still tied today to a single maker's bench, the brand falls under the definition of an artisan workshop rather than an industrial operation.

The Maker and the Workshop

According to records, Yunar began carving in 1990 in workshops in his own village. In 2006 he set up his own bench in Eskişehir's historic Odunpazarı district, and in 2010 received the traditional handicrafts artist certificate issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. A news agency report published in January 2025 states that over a career approaching thirty-five years he has worked more than six thousand pipes and meerschaum objects; this figure rests on the maker's own statement.

The workshop is located in the Atlıhan Handicrafts Bazaar in the Paşa neighborhood. The bazaar emerged from the Odunpazarı Municipality's reconstruction of a caravanserai dating to the mid-19th century; the two-story building is divided into meerschaum, silver, pottery, and glass workshops. This arrangement, in which production and sale are gathered under the same roof, is the continued form of the centuries-old bazaar tradition of Eskişehir meerschaum carving.

Carving and Finishing

Yunar describes his own way of working as a design process that moves directly on the stone without first sketching on paper. The roughly sized block is carved with fine-tipped blades. The raw stone, which holds water when it comes out of the mine, is dried slowly over an extended period after carving by applying heat; it is then dipped in heated beeswax and hand-polished. The wax saturates the porous surface without clogging it, and lays the groundwork for the stone's color, which deepens over time.

The material used comes from the region's own mines. The same news report notes that meerschaum in the Eskişehir deposits is extracted from depths of roughly thirty to one hundred seventy meters, and that carvers sometimes struggle to find workable raw material.

Products

Alongside classic pipe shapes, the catalogue covers the familiar figural repertoire of Eskişehir carving: human and animal heads, bowls set within an eagle's claw, bodies decorated with floral motifs. To these are added surface-painted colored models, pipes with metal bodies and replaceable bowls, and cigar holders; the workshop also works meerschaum items such as prayer beads and necklaces. Since every piece is hand-finished, exact repetition of the same pattern is not expected on carved examples.

A significant portion of the output goes abroad. According to the brand's own promotion, the main buying countries are the United States, Germany, Austria, France, Japan, and China; in statements made by the maker at the start of 2025, he says the strongest interest comes from China and the United States.