Ye Smokiana: 1890 study of smoking

RT Pritchett's Ye Smokiana, from 1890, appears to a very informative "historical" and "ethnographical" study of smoking. It's illustrated with beautiful color drawings smoking implements from around the world, more specifically "pipes of all nations." Ye Smokiana is now on the auction block at eBay. Ye Smokiana (Thanks, Randall de Rijk!)

• [Tore Sinding Bekkedal]

  That’s Þe, not Ye. The thorn, pronounced like the ‘th’ in ‘the’ and often ligatured with the letter e (like we do by combining ‘et’ into an ampersand), was almost indistinguishable from the letter Y in the middle English era blackletter – but is distinct.

  It’s correctly written as ‘Þe’ or ‘the’, not ‘ye’. :)

  • [retrojoe]

    Thanks. A year of paleography in grad school makes misuse of the thorn like nails on a chalkboard to me.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    My favorite misuse of the thorn (which is much misused in the Boston area) was Ye Olde Helpy Selfy laundromat, “helpy selfy” being pseudo-Chinese and the whole thing written in a pseudo-Chinese font.

    • [Wreckrob8]

      Helpee Selfee Raundromat!

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Yup. That was pretty much it. Only with the ubiquitous New England Ye Olde tacked on the front.

    • [Tore Sinding Bekkedal]

      Yat’s fantastic!

• [Hamish Grant]

  also available in electronic form at archive.org!
  http://archive.org/details/smokianahistoric00prit

• [John Napsterista]

  I confess to curiosity as to which of the boing boing staff smoke tobacco cigarettes, either regularly or on-occasion.

• [Wayne Dyer]

  Hokey-Smoki, Smoki-oki-aan
  Okey-Dokey, anybody can
  (Smoki-Smoki) man, oh man, oh man
  You sing a-bing-a-bang-a-bingo
  In hokey-pokey Smokiaan
  Smoki-aa-aa-aa–ann

• [Amílcar Ortega]

  JRR Tolkien totally stole this Pritchett guy’s logo idea –> http://oetg.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/JRRT_logo.jpg