Ink was first used in the Middle East and Asia around 2500 B.C. This early ink was created by mixing soot containing pure carbon with gum to keep the carbon in suspension. While carbon ink would not ...

Wine, it turns out, was a key ingredient in many recipes for iron gall ink — for all you non-ink nerds, that was the writing ink used by most of the Western world from the Middle Ages all the ...

The process of ink-making has changed over time. Iron gall inks were used during the 1400s and were made from a mixture of tannic acid and iron salt (often ferrous sulfate).

One of the more fascinating bits of history is that oak galls were used for making iron gall ink. In “Oak: The Frame of Civilization,” Logan describes gall ink as “far superior to soot ink – called ...

THE air is heady with the smell of cheap wine. I’m down on my knees smashing a pile of “gall nuts” into dust with a hammer. There’s a heap of green “cave scrapings” and tree sap by my ...

The experts found no trace of the iron-gall ink used in the two books with which it had been bound, and they couldn't identify the recipes. That was a task for science, and science obliged in 1972.

This project examines iron gall ink crystals within drawings in the collection of the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and selected additional ...