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Ken, in spite of your December 28th indication of becoming
reasonable, you still keep repeating objections that I have
previously addressed. Repeating them does not make them any stronger
scientifically, Herr Goebbels's success with the public
notwithstanding. Maybe you just didn't understand my responses, and
if so I'll gladly clarify. And if you found specific fault with
them, you didn't say so. And yes, I do have a right to change my
(hypothetical) scenario from time to time when it seems to make a
better fit with evidence. That's exactly what you have invited me to do.
At 10:05 AM 1/1/2010, you wrote:
On Dec 30, 2009, at 11:27 PM, James Enterline wrote: [regarding
Kirsten Seaver's gaffe]
But really, give me some credit for being a little sharper than you imply.
That's becoming increasingly difficult. In 2002 Jim expected someone
to believe that a scribe would make up an iron-gall ink without
using the principal ingredient, green vitriol, and then retrace the
entire Vjnland Map. Now he expects someone to believe that instead
of quickly retracing the document, the scribe added carbon to his
iron-free ink.
That would not be so hard to believe. It was frequently done. Read
your ink history.
Jim expects someone to believe this scribe still did not notice
that his ink was not turning black (in a half-hour or so) so he
completes the entire map, including its text. Not a very sharp scribe.
How would he notice, and what difference would it make, as it was
already black from the carbon? Whether the vitriol omission was
accidental or intentional is irrelevant -- people did experiment with inks.
Jim expects someone to believe that hundreds of years later a
hypothetical map-seller would ignore specific cleaning procedures
(Plenderleith, see Dec. 13th post "More on the Enterline scenario").
The specific procedure calls for a conservator to brush bleach on a
blotting paper applied to the back of a valuable document which is,
itself, placed face down. Not a very sharp map-seller.
I addressed Ken's Dec. 13th concerns in my Dec. 14th response posted
under "Vinland Map -- Time for a new conference," particularly in the
last Paragraph: "As for the Plenderleith citations, the first one
(footnote 7) was to establish his early (1937) advocacy of bleaching,
not to describe the tissue process. The second (footnote 9) was to
establish the front-face tissue process (where he had by 1956
abandoned bleach for other cleaners). " Apparently neither Ken nor
Kirsten read (or understood) those references in detail. Just
because I called Plendereleith the "bible" of conservators does not
necessarily mean that the bleacher (owner or seller) had it in front
of him as a step-by-step guide. It just reflects common practices of the times
Jim's procedure brushes bleach onto the back of a tissue. So far, so
good.... and it might even work. BUT the typewriter bond he and his
map-seller are using (not a real blotting paper) is FACING the
unprotected map's ink they desire to "spruce up". This Jim and the
map-seller must do in order to transfer anatase to the front of the map.
But this is exactly what the second Plenderleith reference
describes. And he specifies tissue instead of blotter (for obvious
reasons). His context was the cleaning of delicate Japanned works,
but there's every reason to think the bleacher would have considered
the map in a similar light.
Obviously, adding anatase to the back of the map is useless and
would not be very sharp for an intrepid theorist resolutely intent
on authenticating a forgery by extending the doubts that few others have.
I don't understand the thrust of this argument. Why should someone
resolutely intent on authenticating a forgery put anatase anywhere?
Now Ken, please get back to addressing the reasonableness of my last
post about separation of the ink.
Jim
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