15-11-2016, 12:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 15-11-2016, 01:47 AM by -JKP-.
Edit Reason: Corrected spelling of name
)
R. Sale wrote: The shape of a moving snake is an occurrence of nature, whether it is wavy or nebuly or whatever. However, the name that is given to a pattern is derived from its ideological origins - wavy from waves, obviously; nebuly from nebula, just as obviously.
Yes, the name is derived from its ideological origins. But artists take ideas where they can find them. If the edge of a cloud and the movement of a snake look similar to the artist, that person might choose to draw a snake-like cloud edge (and we end up with nebuly iconography). Or an artist might notice that the ruffle on a piece of fabric, along the edge, looks like snake-heads. If snakes are common themes (as in countries where the snake was sacred), they might choose to combine the shape of the ruffle with the suggestion of snakeheads (as is seen on some ancient pottery) to suggest a sacred story or personage.
In the same way, if you fold a band of cloth (lace) back and forth on itself, it will assume a natural shape and it's going to take a lot of starch to get it to do something else.
In the medieval ages (and even in current times in parts of eastern Europe), fabric design, ruffles, stitching and other forms of embellishment were sometimes loaded with symbology. The stitch designs are often religious symbols or a form of "heraldry" in the sense of representing a certain family or culture. Sometimes these designs were incorporated into lace and cross-stitch. You could tell where a person was from by seeing their clothes and you could "read" a lot more if you knew the symbols in the clothes.
So... the choice of the ruffle might be a natural offshoot of how fabric folds, but most fabric does not hold a nebuly line naturally. Lace flops. Most fabric flops. Almost everything the nobility wore was made of cotton, linen, and silk, which are particularly floppy. Lace is even floppier because it is full of holes. You have to starch it very heavily to create this kind of ruffled collar and the starch dissolves if it's humid—it takes special processing to create this kind of collar. Today we have synthetic fabrics, but those didn't exist before the 20th century. The deliberateness of the shape of these collars is apparent. Whether it actually meant to mimic a nebuly, I'm not positive, but given that it was only nobles/rulers who wore it when it was first introduced I wouldn't be surprised if there were an association between a shape that is unusually uncomfortable and difficult to make and a certain image they wanted to promote. There are many other kinds of collars that hide the neck, so even though this may be partly responsible for the fashion at the time (VViews made a good point), it's probably not the whole story.
R. Sale wrote: As far as nebuly lines in VMs leaf margins, is this really a natural occurrence? Where are the real plants that possess this characteristic? While I'm not involved in the investigation of VMs plants, I do know that leaf margins are categorized into a number of different patterns and I do not recall this sort of regular, bulbous meandering to be one of them. But perhaps someone has found an example.
One of the most difficult things for artists and nonartists to draw is a ruffled leaf margin. A leaf margin can be either smooth or serrated, but if it is ruffled and serrated, it's harder to draw. If it is ruffled an lacinated, many people simply can't draw it (even many artists). There have been some pretty interesting solutions to trying to represent a ruffled leaf edge and some of the more elaborate VMS leaf margins might, in fact, be attempts to show lacinated or serrated edges that are also ruffled and perhaps are also drawn to be mnemonic or stylized.
... Differences deny identity. Differences are visual. And the thing about differences in the VMs is that they are flawed and ambiguous themselves. The orientation of the blue-striped patterns is not just one possible option. Only the hidden, second option makes a significant, historical connection. The creator of these images is a master of heraldry able to create the papelonny pun. Sophisticated heraldic canting and objective positional confirmations are confronted by investigators who have never seen a specific, obscure heraldic fur and what should we expect? Nothing. It actually is obscure and often omitted from references. That does not impact the validity of the identification.
As I've mentioned before, my knowledge of heraldry is almost nil (which means I wouldn't recognize it if it were coded) and when I look at the various geometric patterns in the VMS, they resemble embellishments from dozens of different sources, including church architecture, fabric, paintings, illuminated initials, chair legs, religious relics, and many others. Lines and circles are everywhere.
To convince people like me, with no background in heraldry, that there is heraldic iconography in the VMS one would have to pick them out, line them up, and explain them. Otherwise how would we know what to look for or that these shapes are specific to heraldry and not just semi-random designs?
Yes, the name is derived from its ideological origins. But artists take ideas where they can find them. If the edge of a cloud and the movement of a snake look similar to the artist, that person might choose to draw a snake-like cloud edge (and we end up with nebuly iconography). Or an artist might notice that the ruffle on a piece of fabric, along the edge, looks like snake-heads. If snakes are common themes (as in countries where the snake was sacred), they might choose to combine the shape of the ruffle with the suggestion of snakeheads (as is seen on some ancient pottery) to suggest a sacred story or personage.
In the same way, if you fold a band of cloth (lace) back and forth on itself, it will assume a natural shape and it's going to take a lot of starch to get it to do something else.
In the medieval ages (and even in current times in parts of eastern Europe), fabric design, ruffles, stitching and other forms of embellishment were sometimes loaded with symbology. The stitch designs are often religious symbols or a form of "heraldry" in the sense of representing a certain family or culture. Sometimes these designs were incorporated into lace and cross-stitch. You could tell where a person was from by seeing their clothes and you could "read" a lot more if you knew the symbols in the clothes.
So... the choice of the ruffle might be a natural offshoot of how fabric folds, but most fabric does not hold a nebuly line naturally. Lace flops. Most fabric flops. Almost everything the nobility wore was made of cotton, linen, and silk, which are particularly floppy. Lace is even floppier because it is full of holes. You have to starch it very heavily to create this kind of ruffled collar and the starch dissolves if it's humid—it takes special processing to create this kind of collar. Today we have synthetic fabrics, but those didn't exist before the 20th century. The deliberateness of the shape of these collars is apparent. Whether it actually meant to mimic a nebuly, I'm not positive, but given that it was only nobles/rulers who wore it when it was first introduced I wouldn't be surprised if there were an association between a shape that is unusually uncomfortable and difficult to make and a certain image they wanted to promote. There are many other kinds of collars that hide the neck, so even though this may be partly responsible for the fashion at the time (VViews made a good point), it's probably not the whole story.
R. Sale wrote: As far as nebuly lines in VMs leaf margins, is this really a natural occurrence? Where are the real plants that possess this characteristic? While I'm not involved in the investigation of VMs plants, I do know that leaf margins are categorized into a number of different patterns and I do not recall this sort of regular, bulbous meandering to be one of them. But perhaps someone has found an example.
One of the most difficult things for artists and nonartists to draw is a ruffled leaf margin. A leaf margin can be either smooth or serrated, but if it is ruffled and serrated, it's harder to draw. If it is ruffled an lacinated, many people simply can't draw it (even many artists). There have been some pretty interesting solutions to trying to represent a ruffled leaf edge and some of the more elaborate VMS leaf margins might, in fact, be attempts to show lacinated or serrated edges that are also ruffled and perhaps are also drawn to be mnemonic or stylized.
... Differences deny identity. Differences are visual. And the thing about differences in the VMs is that they are flawed and ambiguous themselves. The orientation of the blue-striped patterns is not just one possible option. Only the hidden, second option makes a significant, historical connection. The creator of these images is a master of heraldry able to create the papelonny pun. Sophisticated heraldic canting and objective positional confirmations are confronted by investigators who have never seen a specific, obscure heraldic fur and what should we expect? Nothing. It actually is obscure and often omitted from references. That does not impact the validity of the identification.
As I've mentioned before, my knowledge of heraldry is almost nil (which means I wouldn't recognize it if it were coded) and when I look at the various geometric patterns in the VMS, they resemble embellishments from dozens of different sources, including church architecture, fabric, paintings, illuminated initials, chair legs, religious relics, and many others. Lines and circles are everywhere.
To convince people like me, with no background in heraldry, that there is heraldic iconography in the VMS one would have to pick them out, line them up, and explain them. Otherwise how would we know what to look for or that these shapes are specific to heraldry and not just semi-random designs?