The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[proto57]

While titanium was certainly uncommon in medieval and early modern pigments, it's not categorically anachronistic. Here's an early 16th-century manuscript from Germany's Upper Rhine region with a carbon-black pigment that contains detectable titanium, attributed to quartz (and its titanium inclusions) being an ingredient: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Notably, the manuscript above uses both iron-gall ink and a carbon-based blackish pigment containing quartz/titanium. As far as I'm aware, nobody is claiming that this manuscript is a modern forgery. 

So as I see it, the presence of titanium in some (2/10) black ink samples within the VMS is not itself a deal-breaker. What would be a deal-breaker would be anatase of the form, crystallinity, and particle size distribution associated with modern titanium white pigments, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. And that hasn't been reported for the VMS.

Edit to ADD: I read the report you link to more carefully, and noted that the area with the titanium was in the pasted in image of Christ, "This early 16th C. devotional paper manuscript from Germany contains a pasted-in, hand colored image on parchment that presents the face of Christ in an unusual palette of black and dark gray. Quite unlike any of the other pasted-in illustrations in the manuscript, this small parchment icon raises questions about the original materials used and the intended meaning. Technical study revealed that the present dark appearance of Christ’s face and nimbus is a combination of material alteration (of silver leaf, now darkened) and intentional use of black and dark gray pigments to render the face. The main pigment of the face, moreover, has an unusual composition."

They specifically describe this illustration, on a paste down, as "quite unlike any other" in the manuscript, and that its pigments are of "an unusual composition". I'm not sure this would be a great example, as I describe it below, before I read this more carefully... 

Good find, I had not seen that one. And yes, there are rare examples of titanium. I'll post the chart by Yale's Richard Hark again:

   

In that, we see either one or two (not clear which) examples among the 120 samples Hark used. We don't know what items were used in these tests... those could be the Voynich, or even your example, or a third one. So it is not unheard of, just rare.

In the case of the Vms "titanium compound":

- We don't know which compound of titanium it is, and that could very important to know. There are several varieties of Ti, and each would have specific implications
- We don't know the levels of titanium found in the Voynich
- We don't know the crystal form of the Titanium Compound in the Voynich. I had hoped the "photomicrographs" would be of a sufficient magnification to determine the form, as the crystals of the Vinland Map were
- We don't know how the titanium got into the ink of either manuscript

So the amount, type, form of the two samples are not known, and could be very important to answering the question as to what it means that it was found. But it is exceedingly rare to find it at all, and that alone means something: Because it is not the lone indication of an anomaly or possible anachronism, but one of a stunning list of such problems in material, construction, provenance, content of the Voynich. The rarity of the titanium compound does not stand alone.

Put another way, we have here a problematic manuscript, with many questions surrounding it... which then also "happens" to have some level of very rare occurrence of Titanium Compound in the ink? The manuscript you cite is a perfect example of the opposite... a work with no questions (as I understand it), and presumably with provenance, proper materials, content and otherwise proper ink. I would not question it, and accept the titanium is NOT a problem.