Re: VMs: On the use of quills

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Julie,

As far as quills go, which type of feathers do you think were used for the 
VMs? I've long suspected that many aspects of "Hand 1" and "Hand 2" might 
have arisen from the physical properties of different types of feather 
selected for the quills, but without knowing how best to properly evaluate 
that suspicion. :-o

At 14:22 10/08/2004 -0700, Julie Porter wrote:
> An interesting exercise for the reader would be to
> determine if the Vms plants follow the Fibonacci and fractal constructs
> found in the prototype plants the Vms plants seem to be derived from.

The most mathematically satisfying plant in the VMs is f56r, which has its 
leaves arranged in an inverse hyperbolic spiral. This probably indicates a 
Moslem transmission route for the image (and possibly an Egyptian source) 
according to Stan Tenen (who I quoted on-list a few years ago):-
        http://www.voynich.net/Arch/2001/12/msg00010.html

But f56r aside, I should say that I think the diagrammatical language of 
the herbals (taken as a whole) is neither fractal, nor even particularly 
mathematical, nor Qabbalistic, nor alchemical. Recently, Sergio Toresella 
told me that he thinks that though the VMs stylistically resembles the 
family of alchemical herbals (but isn't one of them), he actually suspects 
that its roots may lie closer to the (semi-)naturalistic Greek Dioscorides 
discussed on-list last month.

BTW: nice to have you back. FWIW, I'm very interested in your dating 
(1480-1520, IIRC?) based on the hairstyles - it's one of the few 
independent ways people have thought to date the VMs. Did you ever write 
that up? In this age of digital cameras, it might be nice to place some 
pictures of reconstructed hairstyles placed beside some art source material 
to illustrate your reasoning. :-)

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


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