Re: VMs: Re: Re: Inks and retouching

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi GC,

At 02:49 28/07/2004 -0600, GC wrote:
> Why would I reach such a conclusion?  If you remember in an earlier email I
> asked why the dark ink tends to run in "veins"?  Let's take f3v as
> demonstration that my theory has basis in observable fact.  There's more
> than one mechanical (or chemical) effect observable on this folio, but right
> now I'm only interested in one.  Here we see the image of the paint from
> f3r, and notice that the moisture from the paint on the other side of the
> folio causes some of the soluble portion of the ink to adhere better,
> causing the ink to appear darker.  We see many dark portions on the edges of
> the painted image, and in a few places we see a glyph split between the
> painted image and regular vellum, where the portion of the glyph inside the
> painted image is dark, but that outside is faded.  f3r, line 5, the <ch> in
> word 2. (f3v.5.2 for reference.)  The o and <s?> in f3v.8.2.  (not up on my
> EVA).  The last glyph in f3v.9.1 and the first half of the o beginning
> f3v.9.2.  And most exemplary, the ending compound gallows and the o in
> f3v.11.2.  This series gets dark EXACTLY at the border of the painted image.
> Many dark glyph effects occur inside the painted image.

Well... some do and some don't, but what does that really tell us? For 
example, look at the word-final "s" of f3v.4.2 (EVA <chs>) - this crosses 
in and out of a patch of green bleed-through. Those parts of the letter 
inside the bleed-through are slightly darker than those outside it.

IMO, what examples like these tell us about the VMs' ink is that, for the 
most part, it simply hasn't got a thick enough consistency to completely 
cover the vellum - in image processing terms, it's "semi-transparent". This 
means that not only you can see the vellum beneath it, you can also see any 
bleed-through through it. No need to invoke mechanical / chemical effects 
at all.

But hold on a minute: look again at the top line of the same page, and you 
should see some very unVoynichese Voynichese going on. Words three and four 
(EVA <qotoa sha>) break most of the structure rules we're used to (no 
word-final a's, etc) - and in fact, I think you can see a faint tail on the 
sidfile beneath the first word-final <a>, where the original word was 
<qotoy>. Also, the second "o" of "qotoa" has a slightly different shape 
from other o's (it has a "v-notch" at the top) - IMO, these letters were 
retouched by someone who was not the author, who simply did not understand 
Voynichese. FWIW, the "a" of the "sha" word looks (IMO) more like a 
Renaissance hand, where the leftmost down-stroke of the "a" starts thicker 
but becomes thinner, rather than starting thin and broadening out - compare 
it (for example) with the third glyph on the same line.

Really, I think your selection of dark-letter evidence from this page does 
not support the theory you describe - sure, some are slightly darkened by 
the green bleedthrough (but that's surely because the ink is too thin to 
completely cover the vellum?), some strokes are obviously reinking splodges 
(as the ink-flow settles down after dipping the quill in the pot, analogous 
to the page I tried to mark up in an earlier mail) - but some are from 
retouching, which was done by someone who did not understand Voynichese... 
someone who was *not* the author.

> This is just one page, but the effect holds for other pages as well.  In
> some cases, if you want to know why certain portions of text are darker when
> no reverse image is present, mirror and overlay the preceding page.  I'm not
> certain if the paint itself absorbs and retains moisture in damp locations,
> but I suspect it does, as it has had an affect on the text over the years.
> Certain other folios have clear stains on them, and the ink within these
> sections exhibits similar properties.  These stains were probably made in
> the first two hundred years or so of the manuscripts life, just as a guess.

...which probably means we can rule out WMV, but not really anyone else. :-o

> The ink and its various compounds has to be identified.  The fact that color
> techniques demonstrate two types of ink may simply be that there is more
> than one component to the ink, and it depends on which component survived
> the best in the area you're examining.

Alternatively, if the same retouching ink was used (for example) for the 
foliation, then we might then be able to argue for the retouching's having 
been done after the VMs had been misbound. Personally, I think that we 
should be able to differentiate the retouching not only by ink colour, but 
also by quill technique - ie, from the precise shapes of the strokes. This 
kind of dual identification would surely be enough to prove different 
authorship.

> The answer is simple - no one went through and touched up a portion of a
> glyph here, a portion of a glyph there.

This is right - where he/she retouched a glyph, the retoucher seems to have 
retouched the whole glyph. Dark strokes seem to be largely from reinking: 
and dark parts of strokes seem to have arisen (especially in weak strokes) 
from bleed-through.

>   The ink itself has a minimum of two
> incompatible components, and one of them did not survive well.  Incompatible
> as the components are, even their ability to exist in solution for any
> period of time is questionable.  What may have appeared to be a uniformly
> pigmented application when new is now discovered to be somewhat less than
> uniform, as the water-soluble component (the pigment portion), was rarely
> mixed well enough to be applied uniformly.  Those pigments exposed to
> moisture early on had a better chance of survival, and when the ink was
> thicker, as in the down strokes or o's, the chances of survival increased to
> some degree.

I think this theory fails to explain away all the variations in darkness in 
the kind of systemic way you originally claimed. However, the ink splodge 
on f103r does seem to show two components to (what could well be) the brown 
ink: perhaps this would be a good place for Raman spectroscopy to try to 
separate out the physical makeup of those two components.

> I have over 200 pages of physical evidence to support my conclusion, and a
> great deal of time involved in examining these pages.  I don't understand
> the need to introduce "copyists" "painters", or even "retouchers" when
> considering the physical evidence, but I've seen other more misguided ideas
> take hold.  I don't know who I will convince on the evidence itself, as it
> is rarely brought to bear on a problem.  But I know that only one person
> wrote this, one person drew it, one person colored it, that no other hands
> were present in its creation.  Everything else can slide but the text.

Ultimately, I suspect that it will indeed turn out that (as you assert) 
only one scribe wrote the original text - but I also think that we will be 
able to systematically identify retouchers, and hence work out that which 
was added (in good faith, but perhaps also in error) to that original.

Why decode noise when you can decode signal? :-o

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


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