Myriah Williams writes
Interest generated in research on the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW MS Peniarth 1) resulted last week in
an international collaboration between Dr Gregory Heyworth, director of The
Lazarus Project, the National Library of Wales and myself. The Lazurus Project specializes in multispectral
imaging, a process in which a series of photographs is taken of an object lit
with numerous colour bands spanning from ultraviolet to infrared. A specialised lens made of quartz is used in
the imaging, as it allows for much better transmission of ultra violet light
than standard glass.
Over the course of three days we captured images of select
pages in the Black Book, as well as some of the fourteenth-century Peniarth 20,
a manuscript whose outer pages suffered damage significant enough to render
their texts illegible. The processing of
the images is fairly labour-intensive, so the full results of the endeavour
will not be known for some weeks or longer.
Initial results, however, look promising. I look forward to seeing what comes to light
from this work (pun intended), and am delighted to have taken part in it.
