Stark's ink is one of a number of types of homemade
inks whose recipes were widely available in the 19th century. People often made their own ink before
commercially available ink was inexpensively and easily obtainable.
Dr. James Stark was a chemist during the 19th century who experimented with ink recipes for 23 years. He tested 229 recipes for their durability on various kinds of paper to find the most stable iron gall ink recipe. He submitted his findings in 1855 to the Society of Arts in Edinburgh, Scotland. This recipe was the one he personally used.
Recipe
This iron gall ink recipe is taken from the ''
Household Cyclopedia of General Information'', published in 1881. It is not in common use now, though the preparation of inks with similar methods was common at one time.
:Recipe for 1 gallon of ink:
:*Twelve oz. nut-
gall
Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants, fungi, or animals. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to be ...
s
:*8 oz. each,
sulfate of
indigo and
copperas
:*A few
clove
Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, ...
s
:*4 or 6 oz. of
gum Arabic
The addition of the sulfate of indigo renders the ink less stable on the page and prone to premature browning over time, but less liable to
mould
A mold () or mould () is one of the structures certain fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of spores containing fungal secondary metabolites. The spores are the dispersal units of the fungi. No ...
in the inkwell. It is blue when first written with, but soon becomes an intense black.
The ink can be made without the sulfate of indigo, which will make it considerably less expensive yet more archival. Without it, the ink will appear pale initially then quickly blacken as it dries.
The ink is very permanent and waterproof.
See also
*
Iron gall ink
References
External links
SourceForty Centuries of Ink by David N. Carvalho (Project Gutenberg)*
ttp://www.irongallink.org/ The Iron Gall Ink Website (previously called the Ink Corrosion Website)Open-Ink Wiki -- Stark's Iron Gall Ink Recipe by Fiberdrunk
{{Pens
Inks