Like a lot of people, at some point in my life I came across the Voynich Manuscript, and it now lives in my head, rent free. I have a bad copy of it I had printed at my job - because they needed something to train the sewers on, and someone asked me for page files - but it’s not great, and also the wrong size.
I love books. I make books for a living. I sometimes recover old beat up books as a hobby. And I have long wanted to make a book, sewn and bound, completely from scratch. And now I am - completely recopying and reillustrating the Voynich Manuscript. I’m neck deep in other peoples research into what all the plants might actually be. I found a calfskin vellum analogue (Pergamenata) to use as the paper, practiced writing the text with different types of dip nibs until I found one with a similar look, found a truly black black waterproof ink, made a plan for all of the signatures of the book including all of the foldouts to avoid any tipins - and now I've completed 30 pages of transcription, including 20 illustrations.
Generally my goal it so finish a page a day, and four each day of the weekend - and this has been pretty achievable as each page is taking approximately an hour and a half. Obviously the foldout pages will take longer, being larger - with the giant star map in the center of the book taking the longest. Still, if I can keep the schedule up, I should be able to finish the entire inside of the book by the end of July - and the end of August on the outside range. Then it will be on to sewing the signatures and casing the cover, which may end up being plain leather. With PlanetComicon this weekend, I’m not going to get anything done, and possibly not anything finished the rest of this week as I fell into a cleaning spree of the ADHD variety and have a lot more to do until my brain settles out and I can work again. Fortunately I finished Annatar two weeks ago so I have one less project hanging over my head.
Current Project Plan
Transcribe 204 pages - currently 15% complete
Scan all pages for potential print version
Sew Signatures
Case Cover
Bind Book
There are definitely errors in my text - it’s entirely too easy to loose your plages when copying out a wall of indecipherable text. My husband would like for me eventually to make a printed copy of this book - and I’d ideally like to fix any transcription errors digitally if I did that. The thing that have struck me the most so far are the repetition of “words” - there are a lot of them, and I’ve written out enough of them that I’m starting to recognize character patterns. And in regard to the plants - there are plants that are definitely real plants, completely recognizable in original drawings - and others that look to me like drawing made from verbal descriptions rather than referenced from anything visual or real.
| Page | Plant |
|---|---|
| fv1 | |
| fv2 | Deadly Nightshade |
| f2r | Diffuse Nightweed (Centaurea diffusa) |
| f2v | Nymphoides |
| f3r | Feathery Amaranth (Celosia argentea) |
| f3v | Aconite |
| f4r | Linum catharticum (fairy flax) |
| f4v | Rampion (Campanula rapunculus) |
| f5r | Paris Polyphylla |
| f5v | Mallow (Malva sylvestris) |
| f6r | Bear Breeches (acanthus mollis) |
| f6v | Sea Holly (eryngium maritimum) |
| f7r | starflower (trientalis europaea) |
| f7v | Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale) |
| f8r | Petasites radiatus |
| f8v | comfrey (symphytum offcinale L.) |
Original Voynich page F1V
My Voynich - plant reinterpreted, text copied more or less accurately.