[Blog Post] The Pattern of the Wheel on 57v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Nothing has faded and nothing has been redrawn. The ink simply behaves this way. 

Yes, I am well aware of normal weight variations due to dipping the pen in ink.  And also on the Scribe going back and re-drawing some earlier glyphs that came out light because the pen was running out of ink. Or maybe even skipping over some glyph, asking the Author what the hell was that scribble in his draft, then writing that glyph with a freshly loaded pen.

But still there are plenty of weight variations, ink color differences, and other anomalies that cannot be explained that way.  The ink of the VMS did fade in many places, to the point of being unreadable.   It is not plausible that the Scribe would have written faded glyphs that are almost unreadable (like the y ch at 07:00 in that 4x17 sequence) and not felt the need to redraw them. (Can you even see the h in the ch?)  If you look closely you will see that most (if not all) of the text, on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and many other pages, must have become faint like that, before it was restored by the Retracer(s).

There is nothing like that in the manuscript you showed.  In fact, that example shows how an experienced scribe could keep the pen properly inked at all times, how real iron-gall ink looks like, and how it resists fading and rub-off. 

All the best, --jorge