Iron Gall Ink
en.wikipedia.org
Iron Gall Ink
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#2I make this! (I got into making dyes for all natural tie-dye shirts)
It's cool and relatively easy, but it will eat your paper. It's a cool novelty, but not for anything you want to store long term.
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#3Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here:
Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic acid). I gather from the gallic acid article that galls are easy to crush. Is this why they are used rather than some other presumably more-readily-available part of the tree? Is there something unique about the gall, e.g. it contains more of certain chemicals/biomaterials?
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#4I make this! (I got into making dyes for all natural tie-dye shirts) It's cool and relatively easy, but it will eat your paper. It's a cool novelty, but not for anything you want to store long term.
Yes, iron gall inks are acidic and best not used on regular paper. But they last pretty well on vellum (eg Book of Kells, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells, on which all the lettering is done with iron gall inks)
Lots of interesting discussion here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/226717-archiv...
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#5I make this! (I got into making dyes for all natural tie-dye shirts) It's cool and relatively easy, but it will eat your paper. It's a cool novelty, but not for anything you want to store long term.
Interesting about it being destructive to the paper - the Wikipedia article seemed to describe old manuscripts lasting a long time with the ink. Is it that the paper we have now is less compatible? I'm guessing you might also be into paper, since you're into ink.
Do you collect your own galls? The main reason I found iron gall ink fascinating, was that the ink is described as being common and widespread, but made from something I had never heard of - or, at least, paid attention to. I like oak trees and acorns, and I'm quite sure I've never seen a gall. I think if I had, it would seem like an incredible thing for a tree to produce, until I heard the explanation about the wasps.
Galls remind me of bagworm moths (1). I saw one for the first time a couple of years ago, and it absolutely felt like encountering an alien creature until I found out what they are. The feeling lasted a few hours too, because I had no idea what name or word to search for. One of the many people I showed my video to recognised it.
Edit: I see a sibling comment answered my paper question.
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#6Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here: Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic acid). I gather from the gallic acid article that galls are easy to crush. Is this why they are used rather than some other presumably more-readily-available part of the tree? Is there something unique about the gall, e.g. it contains more of certain chemical…
Not an expert, just got nerd sniped by the wikipedia article. But from I read about the galls, the parasite (wasp, aphid, etc) that causes it can influence the structure/makeup of the gall through chemical/hormonal secretions. Usually the parasite wants nutrients so it "programs" the tree to grow the gall with a higher nutritional content.
As an aside, these are actually excellent questions to ask your favorite LLM. I had to read the entire wikipedia article to have a basic understanding which took me 5 minutes, but I asked chatgpt "do tree galls have more nutrition or otherwise differ from the other parts of a tree?" and "how does the organism causing the gall manipulate the tree's growth process?" and got really detailed correct-sounding responses.
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#7Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here: Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic acid). I gather from the gallic acid article that galls are easy to crush. Is this why they are used rather than some other presumably more-readily-available part of the tree? Is there something unique about the gall, e.g. it contains more of certain chemical…
Oak galls have a much high tannic acid content than any other part of the tree, 4 or 5 times higher if memory serves. It is also much easier to get to the tannins than in the wood which has better uses like lumber and fuel.
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#8Iron inks are fun. They're pretty stable, stain like crazy, but some of them will eat away at thin things like paper, so they're best used on leathers, velours, and other tanned materials. I make a blue using ferric ammonium sulfate and sodium ferrocyanide mixed in water.
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#9Has the ink on the Voynich manuscript been dated? As far as I know, not.
The parchment / vellum is dated to 1425 or so but the iron gall ink could be anywhere up to almost current day.
Is there any strong evidence of the age of the writing?
Re: Iron Gall Ink
#10I have handled a letter from John Ruskin (victorian art critic) which was like lacework, from the Iron-Gall ink eating out the paper. Very odd effect if you haven't seen it before. (it was not kept in archive conditions)