MeerschaumStore (MeerQueen)

MeerschaumStore is a Turkish meerschaum pipe business producing in Eskişehir. It names its pipes under the MeerQueen brand; it entered the community's memory, however, under the name of the sales site it opened in 1999. In reference sources the name is sometimes rendered with dropped letters, as "MeershcumStore Inc." The structure rests not on a single master's bench but on a workshop arrangement that gathers the work of staff carvers under one brand.

Founding Year and Conflicting Records

By the business's own account, the workshop was founded in 1963 by a family elder surnamed Uzkesici. The company uses this date consistently in its own publications with the phrase "Est. 63"; retailer promotions also note the fiftieth anniversary being marked in 2013. Two separate traces converge on the same year, yet the founding date has not been confirmed by an official record such as a trade registry.

The Pipedia record based on José Manuel Lopes's compilation, by contrast, ties the founding to 1908 and directly to Bahadır Baykal, writing that the business then passed to his son Kural. Neither this date nor this sequence has been confirmed in another source; Baykal is cited as the business's current manager rather than its founder. That the name "Kural" exists as a carver's stamp in the Turkish meerschaum trade can be seen from the listing of pieces bearing this signature in estate pipe catalogs; the relationship of the stamp to this particular record is unclear. Because the sources conflict, 1963 is taken as the baseline here, and 1908 is treated as unconfirmed information.