Hydrostone and Resin Pipes

Hydrostone and resin pipes describes pipes produced by mold-casting, standing outside the carved tradition of briar and meerschaum. What ties the two materials together is a shared production logic: a mold reproduces every detail of a fine carving as many times as wanted, without further labor. This convenience produced two very different outcomes in pipe making.

Plaster-based hydrostone remained an openly declared copying and repair material; resin, meanwhile, became both the raw material of cheap mass-produced bowls and the chief tool of forgery in the collector market.

Hydrostone: a Copy in Plaster

Hydrostone is the trade name of a high-strength plaster used in American casting and model-making industries. The chemical basis of the plaster is calcium sulfate hemihydrate; it begins to set about ten minutes after being mixed with water, completes its initial hardening within an hour, and continues to gain strength over the following days as its internal crystal structure changes. Because it sets into a white, tight-grained, lightweight mass, it's favored for sculpture, figurines, and mold work. These same qualities also make it well suited to imitating meerschaum's matte white surface.

The period this material is associated with pipes is the early 1970s. Records show that Michael Seiden, who bought and sold antique meerschaum pipes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, advertised hydrostone castings of pipes and cigar holders from his own collection in Hobbies magazine in the fall of 1971. These pieces were sold as copies, not fakes, and weren't intended to be smoked either. That's also what made the experiment short-lived: plaster isn't a bowl material that can stand up to fire. It does, however, still come to mind as a filler in repairing a cracked meerschaum bowl.