A few years ago, Sarah Goslee (who I believe has her own blog here) gradually become more and more interested in medieval / Renaissance history, specifically (in accordance with her science background) with cosmology, astrology, botany, and cryptography. I doubt any Cipher Mysteries regular would be hugely surprised to find out that, somewhere along in the way, she ended up “hooked” on the Voynich Manuscript. 🙂
Her VMs research has mainly concentrated on PCA (Principle Coordinate Analysis) of the VMs’ text: which I think is a bit of a shame, given that the text was apparently constructed in an anti-analytical way to render that kind of approach largely useless. Oh well!
However, infinitii recently emailed me (thanks!) with a link to Sarah’s fascinating description of the late medieval manuscript simulacrum she constructed. Inspired by a fifteenth century Italian herbal and a fifteenth century Austrian alchemy notebook (MS LJS419 and MS LJS382), she set out to create her own SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism)-style astronomical notebook. Structurally, this has limp vellum binding, rag paper, oak gall ink, quill pens, and writing patterned after a fifteenth century herbal: contents-wise, it has a calendar, the metonic cycle, Domenical letters, location of the sun, etc.
It’s a nice, brief description of a well-contained project: recommended! 🙂