‘Meerschaum’ is a a german word describing a soft mineral , which literally means ‘sea foam’.alluding to the belief that it was the compressed whitecaps of waves, just as it is said in mythology for the goddess of beauty - Aphrodite. It is of an opaque white or cr’am color and when first extracted is soft and easily marked,but it hardens on exporuse to the sun or when dried in a warm room or in a furnace. The exracted lumps are first scraped then dried,again scraped and then polished with wax. The rudely shaped Meerschaum is then taken into workshops,where it is skilfully carved by hand into beautiful pipes,or turned and carved into cigarette and cigar holders and articles of adornment

Meerschaum is one of the major reasons for the fame of Eskisehir. A hydrous magnesium silicate H4Mg2Si3O10 and used for tobacco pipes.Its high porosity acts as "natural filter" allows to absorb the nicotin that is why it takes a rich brown color as used

It contains Magnesium(Mg) and Hydrosilicade in it’s structure.Magnesium doesn't make it strong and the hydrogen and oxygen don't make it cool. It is the crystalline structure; the arrangement of the magnesium, silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in a rigid crystalline structure that makes sepiolite (the clay mineral that is identified by pipe smokers as meerschaum) so good for smoking.Eskisehir has the purest and whitest ,most easy to engrave Meerschaum in the world. Meerschaum deposits of the highest quality are found only in one place in the world - in the small city of Eskisehir in central Turkey.And here the deposits are confined to an area of only 4 square miles.It comes in other masses in various sizes and round. Because it is less dense that the water, it floats on the water.It is soft when newly –extracted and feels like soap but, it hardens overtime. It is also called ‘white gold’ because of it’s color.

Mined with hand tools, and by men trained in this singular family tradition, meerschaum is excavated at depths ranging from 200 to 300 feet. The miners wash the raw meerschaum lumps and sort them into 5 categories according to quality. Each of these 5 categories is further divided into 12 qualities according to size, color porosity and homogeneity of the mineral.