A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Saturday 28 November 2015

On Making Ink.

47. To make good ink for writing, particularly for books.-
Take 4 bottles of good wine, white or red, and 1 lb. of galls, slightly bruised, which must be put into the wine, and allowed to stand for 12 days, and be stirred every day with a stick. The twelfth day it must be strained through a strainer of fine linen, and must be poured into a clean jar, and put on the fire to get hot, until it almost boils. Then remove from the fire, and when it has cooled so as only to be tepid, put into it 4 oz. of gum-arabic, which must be very bright and clear, and stir it with a stick, then add ½ lb. Roman vitriol, and stir it continually with the stick, until all things are well incorporated together, and let it cool and keep for use. And note, that ink made with wine is good for writing books upon the sci­ences, because, when books are written with it, the letters do not fade, and can hardly be scraped out or discharged from parchment or paper. But if they are written with ink made with water, it is not so, for they can easily be scraped out, and it may happen that the letters written with it will fade.
4 bottles of wine, or water, or half of each.
1 pound of galls of xij. oz. to the pound.
4 oz. of gum Arabic.
6 oz. Roman vitriol.
And if you took equal parts of each, galls, gum, and vitriol, as much of one as of the other, by weight, it would still be good; as for instance, 6 oz. of each, would be sufficient for the said 4 lbs. of wine or water, or wine and water mixed as before.
Jehan Le Bégue (1431)
To make excellent ink
Raine water 3 gallons, of white wine vinegar a quart, gaules two pounds, gum arabeck one pound, pomegranate pills one quarter of a pound, all these bruised but not beat too small, copporus two ounces, this will be ready the sooner, if it stand near by the fire, or in the sun.
Late 17th Century.
A direction to make good inke.
Take six ounces of galls, three ounces of gumme Arabeck, three ounces of green coppresse. Crack the galls grosly and put all these to two quartes of the best drink ready to be put up, as followeth.
First put the galls into the drink in a glasse bottell, stop it close and let it stand in the sun 14 dayes, & shake the bottell twice ot thrice in each day. Then at the end of those dayes strayne out the galls & fling them away, & strayne out the drink & wash the glass cleane, & put in the drink agayne, & then put in your coppresse, and let it stand 14 dayes, & then put in you gumme, and put in two or three knives pointe full of sugar to keep it from hoaring .
And put to it a little ising glasse.
Manuscript Inks.




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