[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Quire 9 / binding, was RE: VMs: RE: Writing in plant illustrations

Hi Rene,

At 05:15 22/06/2004 -0700, Rene Zandbergen wrote: 
The entire structure of the Voynich MS *as it
is currently bound* is correctly reflected in these
figures. It was known since many years, first
confirmed when Jim Reeds investigated the
MS personally, and (superfluously) also by
myself.
Also the way in which each page folds is
accurately known, allowing us to conclude that
in one case one fold has changed direction
after the foliation was written.

Thanks very much, I just wanted to make sure! :-)

What the author had in mind could be a different
story.

Add the (apparently) binding needlemarks (between panels 1 & 2 of f67r) to the apparently-misplaced quire signature on f67r1, and it all seems (to me) to suggest that the quire was originally folded and sewn together in the middle of that panel - with f67r1 (moon) at the back of the quire as part of a fold-out page, sitting next to what is now f68v1 (sun).

As John says (sorry for not twigging initially how the whole page-shift business worked!), f67r1 (moon) can only really make sense next to f68v1 (sun): perhaps the needlemarks are a bit of a giveaway that this is so. :-)

This would have made f67r2 the first page in the quire, f67v2 the second page, and added f67r1 and f67v1 to the final mega-wide fold-out page. That really would have been rather unwieldy: and so I believe it would have made sense if the quire had been rebound (between the time when the quire signatures were added and the time when the foliation was added) to "balance out" the fold-outs, though at the expense of slightly misordering pages.

I'm now back round to John's opinion (got there in the end!) Yes, the quire signer actually got quire 9 right, but (for some reason) never got round to marking up quire 19 and quire 20. Perhaps there were some additional (but now lost) pages there - otherwise, why sign the first 17 quires but not the last few?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 

______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list