Iron salts, such as ferrous sulfate (made by treating iron with sulfuric acid), were mixed with tannin from gallnuts (they grow on trees) and a thickener. Huntington describes these other historical inks:Ībout 1,600 years ago, a popular ink recipe was created. In ancient Rome, atramentum was used in an article for the Christian Science Monitor, Sharon J. Several Buddhist and Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink. The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India. Indian documents written in Kharosthi with ink have been unearthed in Chinese Turkestan. The manufacture of India ink was well-established by the Cao Wei Dynasty (220–265 AD). To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it reliquified. The traditional Chinese method of making the ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black, lampblack, and bone black pigment with a pestle and mortar, then pouring it into a ceramic dish to dry. India ink was first invented in China, though materials were often traded from India, hence the name. The Chinese inkstick is produced with a fish glue, whereas Japanese glue (膠 'nikawa') is from cow or stag. They must be between 50 and 100 years old. The best inks for drawing or painting on paper or silk are produced from the resin of the pine tree. Direct evidence for the earliest Chinese inks, similar to modern inksticks, is around 256 BC in the end of the Warring States period and produced from soot and animal glue. These used plants, animal, and mineral inks based on such materials as graphite that were ground with water and applied with ink brushes. Ĭhinese inks may go back as far as three or maybe four millennia, to the Chinese Neolithic Period. Egyptian red and black inks included iron and ocher as a pigment, in addition to phosphate, sulfate, chloride, and carboxylate ions meanwhile, lead was used as a drier. Ink was used in Ancient Egypt for writing and drawing on papyrus from at least the 26th century BC. The earliest inks from all civilizations are believed to have been made with lampblack, a kind of soot, as this would have been easily collected as a by-product of fire. The knowledge of the inks, their recipes and the techniques for their production comes from archaeological analysis or from written text itself. Many ancient cultures around the world have independently discovered and formulated inks for the purposes of writing and drawing. Several Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink. Ink, called masi, an admixture of several chemical components, has been used in India since at least the 4th century BC. Ink drawing of Ganesha under an umbrella (early 19th century).

Blue vellum paper