Researching Book About History Of Ink

[robedelstein]

Hello everyone,

 

I posted this message under the Pen History topic but figured I might as well double up and try here as well.

 

My name is Rob Edelstein and I'm presently working on a book about the history of ink. I was astonished to find that there is little up-to-date information on the topic and, being a fountain pen lover and a writer I thought I'd combine the two. And after Brian Goulet was kind enough to point me in the direction of this group and this forum, I figured I'd reach out.

 

What I'm wondering is: Does anybody have some great old or new facts/fascinating historical anecdotes that would help to tell the tale of ink's rich history? I'm talking about things such as: the tale of Thomas Sterry Hunt, who invented the green ink in U.S. currency, the story behind the ink in the Fisher Space Pen, the story of how "red ink" and "black ink" came to be used as terms for success or failure, the ink in Torah scrolls, comic artist writer Mark Gruenwald's desire that, upon his sadly premature death, his cremated ashes be mixed in with the print run ink of one of his comic books...things of that nature.

 

Anything fascinating regarding the history of ink would be helpful and fascinating to me--tattoos, anything involving forgeries, disappearing ink, squid ink, the strangely unknowable origins of ink, you name it.

 

I'd greatly appreciate anything that comes to mind, either listed here or sent to my email--or both!

 

I'm presently well into the book proposal on the topic, with my agent speaking to interested parties and waiting for me to get off my behind and give him something. I just want to make sure to get the best stuff in there.

 

Thanks very much to anyone taking the time to read this.

 

--Rob Edelstein (redel@comcast.net)

[Unky]

There is interesting info on Goulet's website about the history of Noodler's new color whalemens sepia.color.

 

On Noodler's website there is a good article about their Dark Matter black.

[robedelstein]

Thanks so much; I'll take a look.

 

Nathan Tardif was kind enough to speak to me for the book; we had a couple of discussions on the phone and I have several hours of terrific stuff from him: history, name choices, etc. He was mighty generous. Again, I'll take a look, and I really appreciate you mentioning it.

[N2theBreach]

Over in the Inky Recipes forum, you'll find a thread or two from one of the members who made ink from one of the recipes that Isaac Newton used and recommended. She has an interest in older inks and has made inks from local materials, e.g., Walnut and Pokeberry

[robedelstein]

That's EXCELLENT...thanks very much. I'll take a look. An Isaac Newton reference--that can NEVER be bad!

 

That'll really be perfect.

[dcwaites]

One assumes you have a copy of David Cavalho's Forty Centuries of Ink? That at least covers the history of ink up until the end of the 19th Century.

 

A couple of other little snippets. I saw in the BBC series on The Beauty of Books, in the first episode, a description of the Codex Sinaticus, where they said it was written with Iron Gall ink in the 4th Century AD. This is at least 200 years earlier than I have heard of this ink being used previously.

 

And while the earliest inks are carbon-based, and later iron-gall based, inks based on these chemistries are still being made today, and in FP friendly versions.

I was delighted to find out that the best carbon-based inks using soot from wicks burning oil contained a relatively high proportion of buckyballs and other nano-carbon molecules. And this was 2000 years before the term buckyball was invented. Clever people, those ancient Middle-Easterners...

[robedelstein]

I do have Cavalho's book--it's been something of a bible to me on this--and have also, through looking at Will and Ariel Durant's History of Civilization books, found a number of other late-19th and early-20th century books that have helpful chapters about printing and ink. It's fascinating to see what was used--and what is STILL being used--to make the stuff.

[82Greg]

I know this sounds will sound weird, but please include some recipes with the weirdest ingredients.

[robedelstein]

I don't think that sounds weird at all. If I'm going to do this--and I'm going to--the whole idea is to honor everything that's fascinating about the topic, and there have been so many things used to make ink. It always makes me think of wine reviews: "...it has hints of ash, boysenberry and anise." Just looking at that Isaac Newton recipe the other day cracked me up. So, no: not weird at all. And thanks for answering.

[soum]

Fascinating thread - I'll keenly follow this as it grows.

 

I'll add a few facts that come to my mind readily, you may already be aware of these, in which case I apologise for the repeat.

 

What is commonly known as India Ink was made in China well before it was made in India. Later though, the Indian traders exported the ingredients to China and perhaps the name stuck from then.

 

Tattoos were common among many tribes in ancient India. Though the recipes for preparing the ink varied, some of the common recipes contained soot from a castor oil or sesame oil lamp, mixed with turmeric powder, betel leaf juice, and milk. Other recipes included a pigment from a tree named Semecarpus anacardium. The nut of this tree could leave a waterproof mark on clothes. The European colonists who arrived in India called this marking nut. Depending on the tribe, the tattoo recipes sometimes included soot from burning animal skin as well.

 

Prehistoric cave paintings in India mostly use red and white pigments. These pigments were prepared with ground minerals and were mixed with water and probably resins from trees as binder. Perhaps animal fat was also used. Occasionally, green, yellow, and some other colours are used. These were prepared from vegetal materials.

 

Hope that helps!

[Paddler]

One summer, I did some work making inks from black walnut and butternut husks. I published an article here that is probably still lurking down in the archives. Doing a search on butternut will turn it up quickly.

 

I once dug a stoneware ink bottle out of the dirt cellar floor in a building dating to 1830. At different times, the building had been used as a stagecoach stop, an inn, a tavern, a general store, and as a post office. The ink was made by P. and J. Arnold, London. The bottle was made by J. Bourne & Son in the Denby Pottery, near Derby. These bottles are relatively plentiful in this area. They are even being retrieved from a U.S. Civil War era shipwreck.

 

[robedelstein]

I did know about the India-China ink, but did not know those tattoo facts...and they sent me on a two-hour web study that led me to two tattoo historians I'm going to contact during the early part of the week. Tattoos are an important gap for me. I have no ink (never really had the desire, frankly) but some of the stuff is remarkably beautiful. I'm going to visit the parlor a few towns away that seems to be a really popular stop and just ask around. I just looked up Semecarpus anacardium--the juice appears to be pretty toxic. I'm going to have to look into that further.

 

And Paddler...that stoneware ink bottle dug out of a dirt cellar floor is like a buried treasure story. I love that. Kinda makes you wonder what incarnation of the building produced that bottle. I've been thinking of that story all day. The great thing about writing a book is, you uncover one thing and it leads to five other things, and when you uncover those, they each have five more things on their own.

 

I'm thinking of simply listing, at one point--as more for information as for a comedic wow factor--ALL the different ingredients people have used to make ink. It'd be mighty educational.

 

I spent hours yesterday also poring through fascinating forgery stories. If you haven't heard the names Denis Vrain-Lucas, he's worth a Google. Sometimes a man with a bit of ink can be a very dangerous thing.

 

Thanks again for all this great info, and a terrific story.

[soum]

I just looked up Semecarpus anacardium--the juice appears to be pretty toxic. I'm going to have to look into that further.

The plants is very toxic. However, the nut, after detoxification, has plenty of important medicinal use in the traditional Indian medicine system. Traditionally, the nut was used to dye hair and to promote hair growth. The plant also had use for skin ailments and a variety of other ailments too.

[Jeff L]

There's the story of the Archimedes Palimpest, written a thousand years ago in iron gall ink, where the text was scraped off and the pages reused for other purposes.

 

The parchment was first examined with multispectral imaging then brought to a particle accelerator which recovered the faint remnants of the underlying Achimedes text by targeting the iron in the ink.

 

See:

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/gen/com/slac_pr.html

 

http://today.slac.stanford.edu/feature/archimedes.asp

 

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/tip/2005/may20/archimedes.htm

 

 

 

 

There's also this, on Chinese Purple:

 

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/chinesepurple_summary.html

 

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/chinesepurple.html

[robedelstein]

Soum...I was reading in the 40 Centuries of Ink book the other night about how certain ink mixtures were also used to treat gangrene. It's amazing the dual purposes of this stuff.

 

And Jeff, thanks VERY much for all the links. I remembered the Archimedes stuff (it's hard for me to think about him without recalling his last words--"Don't disturb my circles"--which I read in some childhood book about inventors. It's a phrase I still humorously use sometimes when one of my kids interrupts me with something.) but these links are really great.

 

I"ve gotten a little too obsessed lately with the fact that conquerors throughout history have robbed us of so many volumes: conquering a people seems to lead, step one, to torching the library. So whatever parchments that are uncovered become "history." I can't help but continue to admire the resiliency of ink through all the research.

 

I'm going to be speaking next week to comic book folks and experts on currency security. It's great to be working both sides of history: the past and the future.

 

thanks again to everybody for the input. Rest assured it's all coming in very handy.

[Gloucesterman]

Well this should be a very interesting book. Perhaps you could share some tidbit with us through Pen world as well as here on FPN.

[dcwaites]

Have you got this document ? --

http://travelingscriptorium.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/scopa-recipes-booklet_web.pdf

[robedelstein]

I do NOT...or at least I didn't, but do now, thanks to you. That is great. I'm gonna go stock up on vitriol (I guess I'll start with zinc sulfate) and gum.

 

Thanks VERY much.

[dcwaites]

Also have a look at this web page --

 

Medieval Manuscript Manual

 

not only for the chapter (6) on inks, but for the bibliography.

[robedelstein]

Thanks yet again. What's so great about that bibliography is, I've been relying on 40 Centuries of Ink and the Will and Ariel Durant books to point me in some of the directions to confirm facts and get more info, but 40 Centuries is over 100 years old and the Durant books are dated as well, so it's nice to collect even more research materials that have updated info--thanks.

 

...not to mention everything else in there.