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Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

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• Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 09-10-2025, 02:44 PM

  (09-10-2025, 01:08 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It often seems to me that some Ninja contributors are desperately looking for material evidence that can't be easily explained and therefore "proves" that the manuscript is a modern forgery.

  I obviously do not think it is a forgery. But why wouldn't it have been restored at some time in the past? 
  
  By the time Jacobus and Baresch got it, the book was already more than 200 years old.  They (and who knows how many previous owners) had the resources and motivation to pay for a careful restoration of the whole manuscript.  Marci probably held the book for 10 years or so; he too had the means, and we know that his eyesight was failing in his last years...
  
  In fact, the restoration (like the "dark" painting) probably happened before the book was sent to Kircher.  While the Jesuits apparently had some interest in the book, I can't imagine them spending much time or money on such a restoration. 
  
  Today, retracing faded parts of a manuscript would be considered forgery.  But obviously that was not the case even as recently as 150 years ago.  Consider Wilfrid's smearing of chemicals on f1r.  Much more drastic restorations are still considered acceptable for paintings, frescoes, buildings...
  
  All the best, --jorge

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 09-10-2025, 02:56 PM

  (08-10-2025, 03:51 AM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.when McCrone made photomicrographs of the inks of the Vinland map, it was far higher... you could see the shape of the crystals of the components of the ink:

  
  The image at left is taken with a transmission electron microscope (TEM).  It uses electrons instead of light, precisely to achieve much higher resolution than one can get with an optical microscope.
  
  Electron microscopes require high vacuum and thus cannot be used for whole objects like a book.
  
  
  On the other hand, optical microscopes can get much higher resolution than that of the McCrone report micrographs.   But that comes at the cost of the size of the viewed area.  The best resolution depends on the goals...
  
  All the best, --jorge

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  ReneZ > 10-10-2025, 12:36 AM

  (09-10-2025, 02:19 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sure.  I myself am a lot more skeptical of expert opinions in general, but that is just me...

  
  Nothing wrong with that, in general, but one also has to be specific. Experts are usually explicit about their confidence, and rarely (essentially never) indulge in speculation. 
  
  I remember the first time I had a chance to talk with a MS librarian about the Voynich MS writing, specifically the marginalia. This was in the Strahov monastery library, but not the time that we were there.
  While he was looking at the top of f116v, I mentioned that someone had the theory that the book was written by Jacobus de Tepenec. He immediately straightened, looked at me and said: "no way".
  That was a confident statement.
  
  The same type of confidence was present in the case discussed here.

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  Jorge_Stolfi > 10-10-2025, 02:13 AM

  (09-10-2025, 11:37 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some supposed 'gold specks' were on my list of things to look at during the Folger 2014 workshop. These had been highlighted in one of the older Voynich fora by a contributor called David Suter. Most are on f46v, the page with the so-called "eagle root". I include a figure he had prepared for this:

  
  Thanks for the image.  On the BL 2014 scan of f46v, the "gold specks" (those highlighted stains except 4, 5, and 9) look more rusty orange than yellow, and no different than many other stains all over the book.  And they look quite different in color, shape, and texture from the yellow "egg yolk drop" of f70v1 that we were discussing.
  
  As for spots 4, 5, and 9, on that image and on the BL 2014 scan of f46v, they look like lumps of white opaque putty, with a light tan halo around them.  I have no reason to doubt their identification as glue splattered from the binding.  However they don't look at all like gum arabic, which is transparent and (in that thickness) practically colorless.  If that glue contains gum arabic, it must contain also something else that makes it white and opaque.
  
  And those three drops don't look like the yellow "egg yolk drop" at the end of the object on the nymph of  f70v1.  But that same white stuff may be the white part of that object (which is where McCrone seems to have taken sample 18 from). 
  
  All the best, --jorge

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  ReneZ > 10-10-2025, 03:46 AM

  The pictures are insufficient to decide what one is looking at.

• RE: Figures from McCrone Pigment Analysis?

  Aga Tentakulus > 10-10-2025, 10:04 AM

  Sometimes it's enough for someone to sneeze. Then it's just sticky boogers.
  
  Manchmal reicht es wenn jemand niest. Dann sind es nur klebrige Popel.
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