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(Created page with "==Lost in Translation: The Linguistic Hodgepodge of Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O== '''''Ben Rapaport, August 1, 2012''''' Neither a major industrial mineral nor a precious stone, mee...") |
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==Lost in Translation: The Linguistic Hodgepodge of Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O== | ==Lost in Translation: The Linguistic Hodgepodge of Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6H2O== | ||
'''''Ben Rapaport, August 1, 2012''''' | '''''[[Ben Rapaport]], August 1, 2012''''' | ||
Neither a major industrial mineral nor a precious stone, meerschaum still retains a record of a long—and continuing—association with art and the personal affairs of man. It’s about time for an in-depth, investigative treatise on it and écume de mer, two words that have been intertwined, confounded, and misunderstood for about 200 years. Here’s one reason why. A hundred or so years ago, one would have read: “There are some smokers who, because the English equivalent of the word, meerschaum, is seafoam, imagine that the light and delicate material of which their pipes are made is the froth cast by waves upon chalky coasts, which has become solidified by some process of nature” (“Mineral Treasures of the Earth,” The Search-Light, March 31, 1906, 205). A hundred years later, when Tinder Box posts the following online, I have to wonder where a newbie pipe smoker gets his meerschaum smarts: “The mineral itself is the fossilized shells of tiny sea creatures that fell to the ocean floor over 50 million years ago, there to be covered and compressed over the ages by layer upon layer of silt” (“The Story of Your Meerschaum Pipe,” http://www.tinderboxinternational.com/meerschaum.htm). | Neither a major industrial mineral nor a precious stone, meerschaum still retains a record of a long—and continuing—association with art and the personal affairs of man. It’s about time for an in-depth, investigative treatise on it and écume de mer, two words that have been intertwined, confounded, and misunderstood for about 200 years. Here’s one reason why. A hundred or so years ago, one would have read: “There are some smokers who, because the English equivalent of the word, meerschaum, is seafoam, imagine that the light and delicate material of which their pipes are made is the froth cast by waves upon chalky coasts, which has become solidified by some process of nature” (“Mineral Treasures of the Earth,” The Search-Light, March 31, 1906, 205). A hundred years later, when Tinder Box posts the following online, I have to wonder where a newbie pipe smoker gets his meerschaum smarts: “The mineral itself is the fossilized shells of tiny sea creatures that fell to the ocean floor over 50 million years ago, there to be covered and compressed over the ages by layer upon layer of silt” (“The Story of Your Meerschaum Pipe,” http://www.tinderboxinternational.com/meerschaum.htm). | ||