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VMs: Bleed-across...

HI Walter,

Thanks for introducing yourself!. :-)

At 00:52 23/06/2004 -0700, Walter Ogburn wrote: 
My list of writing within the illustrations of plants is now pretty complete,
in that I have looked at all the plants in the VMS and have catalogued all
the notations I could find.

Good work - I did pretty much the same thing a while back from the CopyFlo (though only really for those non-Voynichese fragments embedded in the pictures), but the better quality images make a big difference. If there is a pattern to be found there, I think it's in Quire 1. :-)

BTW, my guess is that the Retinex / Photo Flair contrast enhancement app /plugin may well prove to be the best one for automatically enhancing local detail (like painted-over labels etc).

  Another project that was suggested recently is
to make a catalogue of all the instances in which colors have bled from one
page onto the next, especially testing whether one direction is preferred.  I
would be interested in working on this, and scanning for other feature in the
sid files if there are more suggestions.

It's fairly safe to say that bleed-across hasn't yet been tackled satisfactorily. It's clear that it exists, but just what process causes it, and is there a consistent pattern behind it? Properly cataloguing examples of it would be a good first step towards understanding it - and, thanks to the new sidfiles, this is now possible.

FWIW, my hypothesis here is that the herbal pictures were (for whatever reason) left almost entirely uncoloured, but were later painted over by an actor in the VMs' drama usually known as "the heavy painter", who seems to have been fairly insensitive to the content (painting over labels, etc), quite probably due to his/her inability to read it. :-) However, it has been noted that the vellum used throughout the VMs seems generally quite thin (one possible explanation for that is that some diagrams may have been traced from an pre-existing copy), and so perhaps it took much longer to dry than the heavy painter expected - leaving sufficient residue to bleed across.

...but that's another story entirely. :-)

Interestingly, you might also consider examining the guttering on the sidfiles on quire 1 for needlemarks - it might be possible to work out (from the symmetry between bleed-across instances) how the quire was probably stitched at the time it was painting. What's interesting here is that the bleed-across on f3r is from the drawing ink, not from the paint - that might be aligned differently.. :-)

FYI, here's my annotated list (admittedly from the CopyFlo, so expect some mistakes) of bleed-across instances to get you started: the page listed is the target containing the bleed-across, not the source (which is always the facing page).

f3r 80% down page: small shoot from f2v's stem (note: in drawing ink, not in paint!)
f4r right at top: curve from opposite page
f5r right at top: blob from star shape on opposite page
f6r 25% down: blob from opposite page near gutter
f9v stray mark very near top - possibly bleed-across?
f10v note the water stain, where text has also bled through (quite rare!?)
f13v top left - apparently from top of facing plant
f18r many marks across top
f20r three marks across top
f26r marks near top left
f27v marks near top left
f30r top left
f31v top centre
f33r 25% down on left - note this is between a Herbal A and a Herbal B!
f39r marks at top
f46v marks at top left
f48r 10% down on left
f50r mark at top left
f55v 30% down, marks on left
f56r mark at top, just above 2nd gallows (not consistent with water damage?)
f93r beside leaves: water stain or bleed across from missing quire 16?
f94v 60% down by gutter

One interesting pair is f55v and f56r - this has bleed-across in both directions!

If you can use the sidfiles to validate this short list (and perhaps find a few more besides), that would be fantastic - much appreciated!

Best regards, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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