A match for the containers? 16th-17th century ivory vases

[proto57]

Personally I find the idea that the objects drawn in the VM are merely containers is a bit naive. Why would the artist draw containers? What useful information would that convey to anyone reading a recipe? I think the things in the VM are more significant to the recipe, like percolating devices or ovens / kachelofens.

There is a school of thought that says they have no meaning in particular, because the VMS is a later forgery.

The fact that no experts can agree on what exactly those objects are, despite considerable knowledge of medieval imagery, reinforces this hypothesis.

Yes, I agree. When I compiled my list of the 12 "Red Flags of Forgery" from reading a great many books on the history of art and literary forgery, one item on that list was exactly that: A wide range of expert disagreement on comparisons to real objects and iconography, on meaning, on age, on authorship, on art historical styles and techniques, and so on, tended to be found in forgeries, and rarely, or to a far lesser degree, on genuine items.

I think the reason for this is obvious: A person who is creating a genuine work in their time mostly knows there time, their discipline, their language, has their style from their era. So, what they produce tends to stick closer to an era and meaning which is agreeable to the experts. But a forger has all of human history to draw from, for one thing... they might tend to include things from the wrong era to the one they are faking. They also usually, unintentionally, betray their own styles from the error the forger lives in. I call this the "Star Trek Effect'. Look at an episode from the original 1960's run of the show. They were doing their damndest to portray hundreds of years ahead of their times, and changed many styles and attitudes to reflect this. But, still, we now see the bell bottom pants, the hair styles, makeup and many clearly 60's social attitudes.

Point being, TLDR, I believe the Voynich includes much varied content, and many styles, to such a level of diversity which is found in no one other work, and because of this, the wide range of expert opinions as to age, content, meaning, authorship, geography of origin, reflects this, and it is one of the red flags that tells us it is a forgery.

Rich