The nature of this provisional colouring matter varies in different inks, and no two manufacturers appear to use the same substance for this purpose. In some inks indigo is employed, in others logwood, while the introduction of aniline dyestuffs placed an abundant choice of colouring matters at the disposal of the manufacturer.
In the case of old inks it would only have been possible to distinguish between writings done with different kinds where some mistake had been made in the preparation of the ink, and a large excess of iron or of galls had been used.
The possibility of such mistakes occurring, however, will be readily understood when it is remembered that ink-making was formerly as much a part of the duties of the housewife as the baking of bread or the making of cordials.
As writing was a polite accomplishment restricted to the educated people of leisure the ink-manufacturer could not have existed, for there would have been no customers, and recipes for the making of ink were therefore handed down for generations.
A particularly interesting example of an early domestic recipe for making ink is shown in the accompanying figure which Mr. G. Weddell has kindly allowed to be reproduced. This was taken from a collection of old family recipes dating back to the early part of the sixteenth century, and including among its odd assortment of items directions for making everything needed for the household, from apple pasties to cures for the king’s evil. This particular recipe, which was one of several for making ink, was probably written towards the close of the sixteenth century. It gives directions for soaking the galls in rain water (or claret, or red vinegar) and boiling the liquid, after standing for a few days, with copperas and gum. The whole collection of these recipes, which suggest many a picture of the life in an English household in the sixteenth century, has been published in facsimile (Arcana Fairfaxiana Manuscripta, 1890).
Elizabethan domestic recipe for ink
Ink made by the rule of thumb methods of the housewife must have often been very poor stuff, and it is to this cause that we must attribute the want of permanency of the ink in some of the relatively modern writing as compared with that upon manuscripts centuries earlier.
No more interesting illustration of the effect of the composition of old inks upon the permanency of writing can be found than in the various names written in Milton’s family Bible, to be seen in the British Museum. It will be noticed that all the entries of the births of himself and the members of his family are in the handwriting of Milton, and that with one exception all the inks are of a good dark tone. The exception is seen in the entry relating to the birth of his daughter Deborah “on the 2nd of May, being Sunday, somewhat before three of the clock in the morning, 1652.” Here the ink has faded to a faint brown tint.
Considerable variations are possible in the proportions of galls and iron that may be used without interfering with the blackness of the pigment, but a deficiency of tannin outside those limits will cause the writing to turn brown. A lack of tannin to combine with the excess of iron present is probably the explanation of this faded entry in Milton’s Bible.