Re: VMs: From "Look Alike" Series, starring f69r ...

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 09:20 09/06/2005 -0500, Florin wrote:
> "Look" is the central rosette from f69r, "Alike" is from a 1500 solar
> calendar, carved in wood, origin Sweeden, from Schoyen collection.
> A head-to-head comparation can be found here :
> http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~fion/vm/f69r.htm

A fascinating find, thanks Florin! Here is its description in the Schoyen 
collection itself:-
        http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.7/index.html#1577
        http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.7/ms1577.jpg

        MS 1577

        CALENDAR WITH WEEKDAYS, GOLDEN NUMBERS, TABULA
        SIGNORUM, SOLAR CIRCLE, AND FEAST DAYS

        MS in Swedish on ivory, Sweden, ca. 1500, 9 ff., 6x12 cm, single
        column, (6x11 cm), 4-6 lines in Runes of the younger Futhark,
        some saints' names added later in French in capitals, 1 solar
        circle drawn like a ropework spiked wheel with solar numbers
        in runes, another drawn like a spiked wheel with solar
        numbers in Gothic book script of medium to low grade and
        quality, 32 feast day symbols indicated with symbols, runes,
        crosses and fishes in black and red, 80 drawings of saints
        in black and red copied after a Flemish book of hours,
        use of Brughes.

        Binding: Sweden, ca. 1500, ivory covers fastened with a modern
        string through 2 holes, astronomic diagrams on both covers.

        Provenance: 1. Charles Ratton Collection, Paris (d. 1984);
        2. Sandra Hindman, Chicago (1991-).

        Commentary: Calendars in bookform made on ivory are of the
        utmost rarity. This is probably the most extensively illustrated
        example extant, and the only specimen in private hands.

        Exhibited: "The Story of Time", Queen's House at the National
        Maritime Museum and The Royal Observatory, Greenwich,
        Dec. 1999 - Sept. 2000.

> For completeness  I included the Gothic alphabet.

Can you link the two together? Perhaps I'm just rubbish at reading "medium 
to low grade" Gothic, but I can't link the alphabet with the letters in the 
diagram nicely - any suggestions?

> 2. Arguably, the following two Gothic characters after the X can also be
> found on f116v. I was mostly interesting in that O with a dot in the
> middle. I  have another document written (Benedictan prayer or hymn) in a
> similar way, words intermixed with cross signs and O with a dot in the
> middle. Has anyone  seen something similar ?

Read Richard Kieckhefer's (1989) "Magic in the Middle Ages", chapter 4 
(p.56ff), particularly the section on "charms: prayers, blessings and 
abjurations" (p.69), etc. Intermixed cross signs were commonly found in all 
of them: "pax + pix + abyra + syth + samasic", etc.

The O-with-a-dot-in-the-middle I don't know anything about, though, sorry. :-(

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


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