News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-09-09
THE FAMOUS MEERSCHAUM.
Not Likely that an Oregon Man has a Mine
OF IT, but if He has He is Lucky,

! All the meerschaum comes from a lit
tie place called Eskischia, In Asia Minor.
says dealer in the article, referrinp to
the story that an Oregon man had found
a mine of it, where it is found at a depth
of about fifty feet underground; but how
it is found only the Turks who find #
! know. Those Turks are very RELIGIOUS
Mohammedans, and an article of their
faith seems to be the duty of killing
any Christians who come about there
asking questions concerning the meer-
schaum They have kept up that prac-
tice for so many centuries that they have
finally really made it a habit. They
| don't even encourage their co-religion-
lists in impertinent curiosity about it.
Merchants who deal in it, and live with
in five miles of where it is produced.
have never visited the mines. They are
a philosophic people, and prefer living
rather than knowing. When the stuff
comes out of the ground it has much
| foreign matter of some sort clinging to
to II, and mingling with parts of it. All
| that is carefully cut away leaving only
| the pure white material, in the strangest,
most irregular, and fantastic shapes CON
ceivable. AS it is trimmed with sharp
knife, the workman rubs it with thick
oily leaf that gives it handsome polish
for the market. 1t is not sold by weight.
but by quantity, its value being deter
mined by its ightness and the size of
the pieces in which it is. 1t sells by the
box, an arbitrary measure. The box is
about three feet long, twelve inches
wide, and twenty inches high. The
contents of one box may be worth only
$50, and of another $500. The former
will consist OF perhaps 500 small pieces
while in the latter will be only sixty or
seventy.
The consumption in the United States
amounts to about one thousand boxes
year. Six or eight years ago it reached
probably fifteen hundred, but the de-
mand has fallen off one-third in conse-
quence of the decline in pipe oking -
or at least the abandonment of the prac-
tice by so many of those who could af-
ford to smoke meerschaum pipes
There is no duty on meerschaum.
Twice an attempt has been made to put
duty upon it, but the importers have
succeeded, on each occasion, in demon
strating the injustice and inexpediencv
of making it an exception to the law
exemptlng crude materials from duty
The business in it has fallen off a great
deal, but there still is, and always will
be, sufficient demand for it TO make it
very well worth any mans while to find
an American mine of it. That reminds
me that the article that came much
nearer to the real meerschaum than any
other thing l have ever seen, that was
not meerschaum, was found up in Yer
mont. l fancy that it must be kind of
partly petrified wood. 1t was very light,
white streaked with darker shades, and
had tibrous grain, very different from
meerschaum In that respect.
Meerschaum carving is not so good a
business now as it used to be. A good
carver earns from SIS to $50 week,
and in exceptional cases $25. The pay
mcnt is generally weekly salary, and
not often by the piece. 1t would be
difficult to find any basis for payment by
the piece, as each bit of carving is a Job
by itself. The artistic carver must be
able to see design in the strange, fan
tastic shape of each lump, and get 1t
out so as to utilize all that is possible of
the material. That lump, for instance,
would give large handsome bowl from
that end; here would come out three
deer, the buck, with branching antlers,
standing, one doe standing and another
lying down; foliage in the background
on the bowl; grass underfoot and here
a tree stump. All that the carver will
cut out and finish handsomely in from
two and half to three hours; the cost
of his work will be about 81, and the
bowl will sell for $3.50 at wholesale.
What the retail price will be depends
upon how much the customer wants it.
The finished bowls are dipped in boiled
wax to fill up the pores of the exterior,
so as to arrest the evaporation of the oil
from the tobacco and retain it near the
surface, where it acquires the rich color
tor which meerschaum is famous.