The gall wasp (or some other insects) leaves an injection of chemicals into an oak tree gall (a round, fibrous growth), therefore gallotannic acid is created. Water this down to make tannic acid. Mixed with iron sulphites, it creates ink. The ink is waterproof and gets darker with age, making it perfect for important documents.
Used from the 12th century all the way to the 19th century, almost all surviving historical documents were likely to have been written with ink make from oak trees. It was popular because the ingredients were readily available and cheap. Primarily used for important documents as the words or images were hard to remove.
History
The earliest recipes for oak gall ink come from Pliny the Elder, and are vague at best. Many famous and important manuscripts have been written using ferrous oak gall ink, including the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest, most complete Bible currently known to exist, thought to be written in the middle of the fourth century.[7] Due to the ease of making iron gall ink and its quality of permanence and water resistance this ink became the favored one for scribes in the European corridor as well as around the Mediterranean Sea. Surviving manuscripts from the Middle Ages as well as the Renaissance bear this out as the vast majority are written using iron gall ink, the balance being written using lamp black or carbon black inks. Many drawings by Leonardo da Vinci were made with iron gall ink.[8] Laws were enacted in Great Britain and France specifying the content of iron gall ink for all royal and legal records to ensure permanence in this time period as well.
The popularity of iron gall ink traveled around the world during the colonization period and beyond. The United States Postal Service had its own official recipe that was to be used in all post office branches for the use of their customers. It was not until the invention of chemically-produced inks and writing fluids in the latter half of the 20th century that iron gall ink fell from common use.
The gall wasp (or some other insects) leaves an injection of chemicals into an oak tree gall (a round, fibrous growth), therefore gallotannic acid is created. Water this down to make tannic acid. Mixed with iron sulphites, it creates ink. The ink is waterproof and gets darker with age, making it perfect for important documents.
Used from the 12th century all the way to the 19th century, almost all surviving historical documents were likely to have been written with ink make from oak trees. It was popular because the ingredients were readily available and cheap. Primarily used for important documents as the words or images were hard to remove.
History
The earliest recipes for oak gall ink come from Pliny the Elder, and are vague at best. Many famous and important manuscripts have been written using ferrous oak gall ink, including the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest, most complete Bible currently known to exist, thought to be written in the middle of the fourth century.[7] Due to the ease of making iron gall ink and its quality of permanence and water resistance this ink became the favored one for scribes in the European corridor as well as around the Mediterranean Sea. Surviving manuscripts from the Middle Ages as well as the Renaissance bear this out as the vast majority are written using iron gall ink, the balance being written using lamp black or carbon black inks. Many drawings by Leonardo da Vinci were made with iron gall ink.[8] Laws were enacted in Great Britain and France specifying the content of iron gall ink for all royal and legal records to ensure permanence in this time period as well.
The popularity of iron gall ink traveled around the world during the colonization period and beyond. The United States Postal Service had its own official recipe that was to be used in all post office branches for the use of their customers. It was not until the invention of chemically-produced inks and writing fluids in the latter half of the 20th century that iron gall ink fell from common use.