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Ok..
If this is true and the "light box" was available
in VMS days, that encourages my insane fascination about the translucency of
vellum. The "how" of the circle creation was secondary to my interest
in the "if" of the apparent recto/verso alignment was intentional. (that's a
sentence to make an English teacher scream)
Barbara, do you know of any reference material
about this light box, its use and how common it was?
Ken
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 5:55
PM
Subject: Re: VMs: Drawing circles
Barbara babbles;
I wonder how many listers realise that the
artists tool, the "light
box", was actually invented in the 7th Century AD
by an unknown monk on
Holy Island to aid the production of the Lindisfarne
Gospels (AKA The
Book of Lindisfarne) and was a standard tool of monastic
scriptoria by
the 8thC? Any well equiped private scriptorium in the 16thC
would almost
certainly have had at least one.
I've no idea what
these "ancient" light boxes used in place of modern
float glass (a 20thC
invention) as a work surface, howver the principle
of placing a light
source behind a transparent work surface to enable
*very* accurate tracing,
and a shadowless work surface, was several
centuries old by the time of the
Voynich and I can see no reason why the
Voynich author(s) couldn't have
used one if they worked in a monastic or
private
scriptorium.
Perhaps this explains the "how" of the drawings folk
puzzle over?
Just a
thought.
Barbara
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