Hittite Meerschaum

Hittite Meerschaum was a meerschaum pipe brand operating out of Istanbul's Ümraniye district in the mid-2010s. Rather than a workshop that carved on its own bench, it looked more like an intermediary that gathered the work of independent carvers from around Eskişehir under a single name and sold largely wholesale.

Its own promotional material openly states that the name was taken from the Hittites, who established a state in central Anatolia in the second millennium BC. Since the founding year, owner, and any closing date went undocumented, what is known about the brand is limited to archived copies of its website, which was live between 2014 and 2015.

One Name, Many Benches

According to the brand's own promotional material, its pipes were not made in a single factory but on the benches of independently operating carvers. Names listed on the site that are well known around Eskişehir include Erdoğan Ege, Yunus Ege, İsmail Bağlan, Medet Kara of the Emin brand's makers, the Gezer brothers (Mesut, Şevket, and Kudret), Sadık Yanık, İsmet Bekler, and Karahan. The brand described itself as a name that gathered this production and carried it abroad, reporting that it worked mainly wholesale, dealing with importers and tobacconists in America, Europe, and Asia.

This arrangement, common in Türkiye, blurs the line between artisan pipes and factory pipes. A pipe is handmade, but the name on it is often not that of the carver who made it but of the brand that brought it to market. It is therefore ordinary for two pipes bearing the same stamp to have come from entirely different hands; consistency of workmanship and form likewise comes from individual makers rather than from the brand.