Identifying Meerschaum

I found this little piece (About the size of a baseball) and was curious about the material it was made of. It almost looks meerschaum but I really have no idea and was wondering how to tell without damaging the piece. It is fairly light weight for its size and it primarily white except where it has some very light areas of toning.

 

Looks cast to me.
I see impurities you get when something is cast in a mold.
So I would say; plaster?

 

What's the bottom like? Looks a bit like an unfinished Turkish pipe bowl, & light for size would be consistent, but don't think meerschaum can take this high a polish & shouldn't be this color unless smoke stained. Suspect kristiaan is right about it. (If that's a chip at the top of the nose, doesn't look right for meerschaum either.)

 

I initially thought chalkware or plaster as well except that I found out (thanks to my son who is never allowed to touch anything of mine again) that it floats. I came home and he had it in a pitcher of water and it was bobbing like a cork and when I fished it out I noticed it was extremely sticky until it dried.

 

Hmmm. Floating is consistent with meerschaum, but can't imagine that stickiness is.

In photos it looks very smooth. Does it feel grainy to the finger?

 

Not grainy at all

 

If it is hollow, plaster will probably float.

 

You may be right that it is meerschaum & I may have been right, at least partially, about its being a pipe bowl. 'Apache' meerschaum pipe. That's one. If you search for 'indian meerschaum pipe' you'll see a whole tribe.

Maybe they put some kind of coating on the brown ones?

 

Ive noticed when I wash pieces that were in a smokers house they sometimes take a couple of dunks to clean off the nicotine and it can be quite sticky.

 

So, the baseball size isn't too big for a Meerschaum pipe?? And it would be what..... an unfinished one?? I am assuming there is a hole in the top....it kind of looks it..... 2nd image down....??

 

My best guess (which is probably not very good) is that it was made by a Turkish pipe bowl maker using a popular bowl design but always meant to be decorative. Hey, with so many people giving up smoking, a guy has to make a living, although suspect most of the pipes go to collections these days. Some of the carvings are fantastic. Would make sense for them to make things that were ornamental. But wonder is this wasn't coated with something that got sticky in the water, meant to make the color look like old meerschaum.

 

Actually, meerschaum does get a sticky feel when wet; that's one way to tell a real meerschaum from a resin fake (yes, meerschaum pipes are faked, though I doubt the fakes smoke very well.)
And meerschaum will get that glossy a finish; and color can comes from a coating of beeswax, which gives some color. Meerschaum pipes are often shaded by applying more coats of beeswax to areas that the maker wants to be darker.
My first thought was that this was meerschaum, and I have seen sculptures made of meerschaum, though of course one's first though is of course pipes.

 

Thanks so much for this. Now & then I encounter cameos described by sellers as meerschaum, but so far have not seen one I think actually is. Some are 'lava'; some are 'dripstone', made in a mold using water that is heavily laden with calcium carbonate. Then there are the plaques, mainly religious subjects & seemingly all from France, that are described variously as meerschaum, pipe clay or plaster. If you have any insight into these, please share.

 

I'm far from an expert; but I did some pipe-making years ago, and still have an old catalog of pipe-making supplies. Even at that time block meerschaum had become rather expensive, so suppliers would obtain meerschaum chips as a by-product of commercial pipe-making, and they'd grind them into powder and then compress the powder into cylinders. (A home pipe-maker could then drill a hole in a briar block, insert the meerschaum cylinder, drill a pipe-bowl in the meerschaum, shape the briar, and have a pretty decent briar pipe with a meerschaum-lined bowl.)
The compressed meerschaum isn't solid enough for carving, but I wouldn't be surprised if it could be molded into plaques and cameos, and there may well be synthetic compounds that can be used in the same way.

 

Thank you very much. All such knowledge becomes useful for me, sooner or later. Something similar is done now with the 'lava' (solidified volcanic ash) used for cameos. It used to be carved, but now ground, mixed with some sort of polymer & molded.

 

I stick to my theory it is caste.
These impurities is typical on molded pieces.

 

Maybe it was made using the reconstituted meerschaum all_fakes describes, except molded into a figure instead of into a block?

 

Possible.