Talk:Meerschaum pipe

Capitalization edits

Hello everyone! What a great article! I have edited all "meerschaum" and "meerschaums" to "Meerschaum" and "Meerschaum pipes". Grammatically, Meerschaum is not a general German noun (Substantiv), but a German proper noun (Eigenname), these always require capitalization and prohibit abbreviation in non-colloquial context. Of course it is common and legitimate to use German nouns as names for objects, like reading your Hegel or listening to a good Beethoven when refering to a personal book or record, but to keep the grammar correct, one must avoid "looking for my kant" or "practicing the bachs" in writing. Thank you for understanding! -- a culturally-concerned German citizen 93.133.81.50 (talk) 20:39, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Glass paper

What is glass paper— Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.42.94.185 (talk • contribs) 17:20, 24 January 2006

Please don't ask irrelevant questions on talk pages. Glass Paper is a substance used to smoothen the edges of wood. Next time, ask on the Reference Desk.--XenoNeon (converse) 18:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Not irrelevant at all, considering that the article says "The crudely shaped masses thus prepared are turned and carved, smoothed with glass-paper, heated in wax...". That's a new one on me, but it's Wikilinked now. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I see, it's an old term used in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article that this was copied from, which has since fallen out of use. It was Wikilinked by this 29 October 2009 edit. By the way, Dutch rush is another name for the horsetail or scouring rush which was used to polish up these pipes, back in the day. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:02, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

What is zebu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.140.20 (talk) 19:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Now that truly does seem to be an irrelevant question, as zebu is a species or sub-species of domestic cattle, and the word was never used in this article, as far as I can tell. But since the question was asked before glass paper was Wikilinked, I suppose perhaps they were making a point. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:15, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

What about the delightful Austrian pastry, "Meerschaum"? Given that the Meerschaum starts out a nice fluffy white (like the seam foam), as they day goes on oxidation darkens them. That seems more likely as where the pipes get their name. Plus, the Austrians were a colonial power in the area from whence the stone hails at the proper time so that would make sense. The French name for it is merely a translation from the Austrian dialect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.63.53.121 (talk) 00:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Adding a references section

I observe that there are virtually no references on meerschaum pipes following the brief meerschaum entry.

In late 1998, I did extensive research on meerschaum pipes for my late father and created an extensive bibliography, largely annotated, of pipe books and which included information useful for meerschaum pipe research (and which were not, so this is really sort of an analysis of pipe books.) If there is any interest, I would be happy to provide this info to appending in a new references section. I can combine the four sections Bibliography, Unavailable, On Order (via Library) and Wanted. Here is the A & B section from the bibliography file as a sample. I could also limit the bibliography solely to books useful to meerschaum pipe research, but the advantage of including all info is to help the reader avoid looking at unuseful materials.

Is there any interest in my providing such info?

MEERSCHAUM PIPE RESEARCH BOOKS EXAMINED

Ameredes, Harry		The Fantastic Book of Canes, Pipes and Walking Sticks
			Lancaster, PA	Fox Chapel	1994
			Berkeley, CA PL  -  This text of no value to this research - no meerschaum info.

Apperson, George L.	The Social History of Smoking		
                        New York	Putnam’s Sons	1916
			originally				London		Ballantyne	1914
			San Francisco, CA PL  -  This text of no value to this research - no meerschaum info.

Armero, Carlos		Antique Pipes (A Journey Around the World)  (in English)   
                        Madrid	Ardoz	1989
			Purchased from B. Rapaport; profusely illustrated survey with a chapter on 
                        meerschaum pipes and extensive bibliography.  An excellent resource!

Bastien, Andre Paul	La Pipe					
                        Paris		Payot		1973
			(University) Council of Wisconsin Libraries - $12 + $1 fee; 
                        Bibliography.

Bastien, Andre Paul	Von den Schonheit der Pfeife:  aus dem Franzosischen ubertragen von Dr. 
			Brigitte Fischer-Hollweg			
                        Munchen	Heyne		1976
			North Carolina State U Library; German translation from the French original,
			this is a nice picture-book survey of the history of pipes, fair breadth, no depth -
			not useful for meerschaum research.

Beaumier, John Paul	The Pipe Smoker: Being An Entertaining & Scientific Treatise on Pipes & Tobaccos …
			San Francisco	Harper & Row	1980
			Stanislaus County, CA PL

Blondel, Spire		Le Tabac: Le Livre des Fumeurs et des Priseurs    
                        Paris	Henri Laurens	1891
			Tulane University Library; general tobacco book, bibliography, some meerschaum info.

Bonet Nadal, J.Y.	Las pipas				
                        Palma de Mallorca      Cort	1976
			Library of Congress; brief “history of pipe smoking” book, not useful to meerschaum 
                        pipe research.

Brongers, Georg		Nicotiana Tabacum: The History of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoking in the Netherlands			    _                       Amsterdam	 Becht Uitge…	1964
			San Francisco State University Library; general smoking book, bibliography, some info 
                        on meerschaums.

Buzzati, Dino		Il libro delle pipe				
                        Firenze	    Giunti           1946,1966,1986
			Williams College Library; general pipe book, chapter on meerschaums.

Chelovek2010 (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Chelovek and thanks for your suggestions. A "References" section in Wikipedia terms usually means a list of the specific sources that various editors used to actually write and change the article. They are where you could go to verify what is actually written in the article. If you still have access to these sources or still have your research notes (including page numbers) and you can improve our article using those sources, please do so. You could also look at this section of our article on pipes, maybe you could improve that too. I leave a note on your talk page about adding sources.

If you are talking instead about a general list of useful book sources on the topic, that would likely be put in a "Further reading" section - but we would be looking for only sources specifically about the topic, not necessarily about pipe-smoking in general (this article is about meerschaum, not about pipes, though there is overlap since meershaum gets made into pipes). The Armero work looks interesting, do you still have it?

The non-English language works, I'm not sure how useful it would be to list them on English Wikipedia, but if you speak all those languages, there is a wiki for each of them and if you look at the "languages" section of the left-hand menu bar you will see which ones have an article. Franamax (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, I made a little change to your post above to make it more easily readable, hope that's OK.[1] Franamax (talk) 06:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Franamax, for your guidance. (Don't know what you did to the sample biblio, but it looks great - thanks, again.) Meerschaum does not seem to have much use besides its traditional employment in pipe manufacturing, so the topics of "meerschaum" and "pipes" are inextricably conjoined. Just talking about meerschaum in the abstract will be a very short discussion, unlike, say, sulfur or coal or iron. In the pipe world, I expect that brier is in the same category - what use is it but for pipe making?

I am in a quandary about how to offer the info I collected. If one is researching meerschaum pipes, a list of references that one might think would contain meerschaum info, but which, in fact, do not, would be useful to a researcher to save his wasted effort. But of course this could be a very lengthy list and is really the complement of what is desired: useful references about meerschaum pipes. I am perfectly willing to construct a "Further Reading" of either my entire list (useful references & unuseful references) or just of the meerschaum useful references and I am willing to just include it here or in the general pipes section or both, or even just a useful list here and a combined useful/unuseful list in the pipes section. If it would be helpful, I am entirely willing to work with you directly via email to shape up the bibliography in whatever form is desired.

Re foreign language references, they are appropriate to include in the list, IMO, because of the heavily graphic nature of their contents and the ability of a non-language speaker to piece out critical info of interest, such as collector/collection, dates, etc. Admittedly, anecdotal info re carver/owner/history might be unintelligible, but there are ways this might be overcome as well. The technical meerschaum info is pretty much covered in the existing short Wikipedia entry, although meerschaum pipe carving history could be added.

All Meerschaum books I purchased and many of the photocopies of references I obtained through interlibrary loans are across the country from me in my late father's library and are generally inaccessible to me until my next visit home.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated

Chelovek2010 Chelovek2010 (talk) 19:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Well Chelovek, you've already done us a great service by posting just your list above, here on the talk page. People who are seriously interested in researching this topic will hopefully also be reading the talk page and the first thing they will see here is your summary of a large number of potential sources. For listing in the article itself, you should pick only a very few sources which have substantial information because in effect you're telling people they should go to the library and get the book, right? If I understand you well, your full analysis is much longer. If you wish to contribute the whole thing or any part of it, I'd suggest putting it here too so it's available for amyone doing serious research. It it's very long, I can put a box around it so it can be collapsed. To format your list above, all I did was put "<pre>" at the start and "</pre>" at the end of the list, which formats it as if it was typed on a typewriter. Hopefully when you go home for a visit next time, you can set a day or two aside to review your material and make some improvements to the article! Franamax (talk) 03:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

WRONG formula!

The formula given in this article is wrong, even by this article's very sources. See http://www.mindat.org/min-3621.html I have also checked our article on Sepiolite and its sources and it seems that the correct formula is Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O. So I'll be changing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omulurimaru (talk • contribs) 10:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Forbidden link

I don't know why but the external link turns up as a 403 Forbidden page. As I don't have a censor thing on my computer I wonder what happened, nor how to note it in the text. Thanks, Manytexts (talk) 00:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Move some material

Parts of the text deal with other materials and ought to be moved to separate articles or an article on pipes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.227.15.253 (talk) 09:29, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Etymology

The intro paragraph presents two contradictory versions of the etymology. Is meerschaum simply named sea-foam (in German), or is it named after Kummer, the pipe-maker, via French (cum-mer to écume de mer), back to German? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.15.184 (talk) 03:42, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Pronounciation hint

There is a problem regarding the pronounciation hint. I don’t know how it is pronouced in english. The phonetic spelling given for sure doesn’t resemble the german pronounciation, whereas the given audio sample sounds like an accent free german. [ˈmeːʁʃaʊ̯m] ist my suggestion of what is presented by the audio sample. -- Pemu (talk) 16:30, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Clarification needed?

For the primarily blue photo in the history section, what is meant by:

Meerschaum pipes may develop rich colouring from both age and use, which cannot be rushed as in this example.

This sentence implies that the example shoes how the colouring cannot be rushed, but the photo merely demonstrates the colouring, not whether it can be rushed or not. Emflu (talk) 19:06, 12 December 2024 (UTC)