Barrie Schwortz is featuring another “In case you missed it” paper on the STERA Facebook page, a paper by John L. Brown. I covered this same paper on this blog earlier this month in Paper Chase: Microscopical Investigation of Selected Raes Threads from the Shroud of Turin. It is good to be reminded to read this paper because it is so significant.
Barrie writes:
In 2004, Ray Rogers was working on his final research on the Shroud and wanted to get an unbiased, independent researcher to evaluate his own observations on the Raes sample. He chose John Brown, a highly regarded materials scientist in Atlanta, Georgia to examine the samples. Brown completed his work and wrote a paper titled, "Microscopical Investigation of Selected Raes Threads From the Shroud of Turin”
Another of those “interesting but…” papers.
1) “Figure 1 shows a weft thread, R7 … The thread has a yellow brown coating with the exception of indented regions which are white.” Well no actually. Look at it. From the left, the first white patch is not on an indented region at all, the second patch is on the right hand slope of an indented region, and the third indented region has no white patch at all. It is apparent from the background that the light in the photo is coming from the top left towards the bottom right (the dark shadow under the indented region on the right is actually the shadow of the next one along). The enlarged photo (Figure 2) more clearly shows that the white patches are nothing more than glare. This is confirmed by the complete lack of a white patch in the dark area of the underside of the thread, between the two indentations, where the weft thread passed over three warp threads. If anyone is still in contact with John Brown, it would be good to put these observations to him for comment. He might even have additional photos that are more convincing.
It’s amazing how much some folk can deduce from white bits (some, perhaps all glare as you say), when you don’t have the weave that you can probe with a needle, especially in and around cross-overs. Amazing, simply amazing, that with just one single thread – one is able to state with 100% confidence that every pale “indentation” is a cross-over that missed getting painted.
Seems we missed our vocation Hugh – we should have been microscopists, able to learn and deduce so much from a single thread with no surrounding weave. One feels so awestruck, so humbled…
Hugh,
I am the only one who was able to look at R7 after Rogers and Brown (thanks to Barrie Schwortz)
I can say what follows:
– If you look at R7 to the naked eye, the yellow brown coating is not obvious.
– If you look at R7 with a “pocket microscope”, you clearly see small white regions and large (more or less) brown regions.
“The enlarged photo (Figure 2) more clearly shows that the white patches are nothing more than glare. This is confirmed by the complete lack of a white patch in the dark area of the underside of the thread, between the two indentations, where the weft thread passed over three warp threads”
No, the white patches are not “nothing more than glare”
Do you really think that Brown was unable to distinguish glare and coating ?
Hugh, Mr Brown passed way not too long ago. This was rather central to Dan and Barrie’s postings.
Thanks, David; I’m sorry to hear that. Whenever I try to contact one of the original researchers I increasingly find that I’m too late.
Thibault, I’m glad to hear your observations. Can you also say if there were large patches of white, with small orange brown patches, on the other side of R7, where the weft thread passed over three warp threads, and where the viscous madder-laden gum also did not penetrate, presumably?
Incidentally I have just received some madder root through the post. I’ll be experimenting again!
Are we saying the yellow “dye” is only found in the area of the C-14 sampling?
I have to many written correspondences that refute this claim.
Keep in mind, this yellow dye we’re discussing many believed was mistakenly thought of as blood.
I think the word “dye” is sometimes used somewhat indiscriminately to mean all sorts of yellowness (or redness) across the shroud, from McCrone’s “yellow ochre” pigment to Heller and Adler’s “yellow fibres.” I believe Rogers was using it excessively to mean a particular pigment in a particular medium on a particular area. Madder, I believe, is more red than yellow.