Re: VMs: Researching the VMs at Beinecke

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dana,

At 12:18 27/08/2005 -0600, Dana Scott wrote:
> The colors of scribe 1, 2, and 3 (or A, B, C) all each different.  The 
> text color of scribes 1 and 2 is brown and for 3 it is black.  The blue 
> used by scribe-1 shows considerable texture and I was impressed by its 
> sparkle when lighted under magnifying glass.  This suggested to me that 
> there is gum arabic (?) used in the paint.

Are you sure this isn't simply ultramarine blue (ground lapis lazuli) or 
azurite?
        http://www.castle.org/pipermail/scribes/2005-January/004244.html
        http://www.castle.org/pipermail/scribes/2005-January/004245.html

You can (of course) tell these apart by Raman spectroscopy:-
        http://www.chemsoc.org/exemplarchem/entries/2001/esharp/parchment.htm

Ultramarine comes from a land far from the sea (why of course it does) - 
but did you know that the land in question was Afghanistan? :-)
        http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/pigments.html

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


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