116v

[RenegadeHealer]

And there is the "coffee" stain on f93r.

Coffee first became popular in Europe in the XVII century, starting first in the big Italian maritime trade cities, so if it is coffee, it can’t have been put there by the original people involved with the MS’s creation and use. Nobody’s going to pay McCrone Associates to test that spot to see if it’s actually coffee (or what it is), because that’s not likely to yield key information to solving the mystery. Although you never know. Sometimes the seemingly smallest and seemingly irrelevant details picked up while solving a mystery, turn out to be bigger pullstrings than anyone would have thought. If the stain is coffee, that raises the possibility that during the VMS’s unaccounted-for time after being bought by Rudolf, it was accessible and was actively accessed at least once, as opposed to sitting in storage somewhere untouched and forgotten.

Was Wilfrid a big coffee drinker, to anyone’s knowledge? I find it hard to believe that a serious antique book collector would risk sullying a prized item (or any item!) he wished to sell by eating and drinking in close proximity to it. But then again his application of a chemical to Jacob à Tepenc’s ex libris on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is also not something I would’ve imagined a serious bookseller who aims to get good money for a piece would do.