What was black ink made from in ancient Rus'? About simple ways to prepare ink

Remember the lines from I. A. Krylov’s fable?

The pig under the ancient oak tree ate its fill of acorns, to its fullest...

Do you know what oak trees produce besides acorns? Of course, valuable wood, which does not rot easily and is very beautiful after processing. The bark is used to tan leather and is used in medicine as an astringent. And earlier they also used tanning nut galls - growths on leaves and branches in which the larva of the gallworm insect lives. These nuts are better known as ink nuts.

The juice was squeezed out of them, mixed with iron sulfate, a little glue was added - the result was ink that stuck well to the pen, and what was written with it acquired a beautiful shine. Surviving manuscripts written with this ink look as if they were fresh from the pen. True, this ink had one, but rather significant drawback: what was written could only be read after 10-12 hours, and before that the text was almost colorless. This naturally made the writing process difficult.

In another, more ancient recipe for ink, oak was again involved: “Take a little oak bark, alder bark, and ash bark, boil them in water... and then throw in a piece of iron, add a ladle of sour cabbage soup and a mug of honey kvass.” This is the kind of ink they have been writing in Rus' since the 15th century. “Deep Legends of Antiquity” - about the reign of Ivan III, about the final deliverance from Tatar yoke- all this information has come to us precisely thanks to the durability of this ink made from cabbage soup.

Silhouette drawing of the late 18th century.

Self-portrait in the office. Engraving by A. T. Bolotov, 1789

But compositions for writing appeared, of course, much earlier - as soon as humanity had the need to write something down and preserve it for posterity. The first ink was made quite simply: soot was mixed with something sticky. In Egypt, for these purposes, they used ash from burning papyrus roots, which was combined with a solution of gum - sticky thick juice of acacia and cherry. Ink was also used in China for a very long time. Just like the Egyptian ones, they showed good resistance to light. More precisely, it was ink that had a very significant drawback: over time, it became brittle and bounced off the paper at the folds. In addition, the ink was quite thick and did not flow well from the pen, perhaps that is why in the East they preferred to write (or rather, draw) hieroglyphs with a brush.

Ink appeared in Europe much later. Archaeologists in the ash-covered ancient Roman city of Herculaneum found a clay cup with some dark sediment visible at the bottom. It turned out that this is the oldest inkwell known on earth! For more than a thousand years, “ink” - ordinary soot diluted in oil - dried in it. And red ink was considered sacred in those days: only the emperor could write with it. It’s unlikely that the “divine” Augustus thought that 2000 years later teachers all over the world would use red ink to correct mistakes and grade schoolchildren. True, Roman ink would hardly be suitable for this - it could be very easily washed off with a sponge or simply licked off with the tongue.

There were many ink recipes. “Put a walnut-sized amount of honey and molasses, and five or six sheets of gold.” All this was carefully ground, and a liquid was obtained with which to write. Then the honey was carefully washed out, and the golden letters remained. This is how scribes worked in Rus'. Professional Byzantine scribes sometimes also used gold and silver for ink. The parchment was painted purple. Chestnut ink (from a decoction of the peels of green chestnuts), from ripe elderberries and peels was widely used walnuts, even from blueberries - “The Decree on Blueberry Ink” was preserved in a 16th-century manuscript.

But such ink has long since become history. They were replaced by the already mentioned ink from nut-galls covering oak leaves. In 1855, the Saxon teacher Leonhardi made a real revolution in the “ink business”. He invented alizarin ink. They were also gall-like, but not colorless-turbid, but intensely blue-green, turning into a deep black color on paper. The inventor achieved this with the help of krappa, a product of special processing of the roots of the oriental madder plant.

Later, expensive crappies were replaced with synthetic dyes, and ink balls with tannin or gallic acid. However, soon this invention also had a competitor - aniline ink, for example violet. This is a synthetic dye diluted in water. And with the invention of the fountain pen, other properties were also required from ink: it should not destroy plastic or metal parts, should not contain solid particles that could clog the capillaries of the mechanism, should flow easily from the pen, but at the same time not make blots.

When the ballpoint pen appeared, a paste was invented for it, which quickly hardens in air. And now they suggest filling ballpoint pens with ink again - the ball rotates easier, which means the hand gets less tired when writing. A marker appeared. Water-based colored ink with special additives is prepared for it, which ensures all necessary qualities.

There is a proverb: “What is written with a pen cannot be cut down with an ax.” Hardly anyone tried to erase what was written, but they erased, washed away, and removed it very successfully. One of the few reliable ink recipes was proposed at one time by the famous Swedish chemist J. J. Berzelius. Text written in his ink can only be destroyed along with the paper.

But there are a great many recipes for invisible (sympathetic) ink. Half a century ago, they were certainly used by real and literary spies. Sympathetic ink is still being created for various purposes. For example, Japan recently released ink that disappears from paper after two days. They are needed to make temporary notes in the margins of books.

The history of ink contains not only many recipes, but also many mysteries. Back in the last century great inventor Edison invented ink for the blind. As soon as you wrote the text with a pale gray liquid and waited a minute, the paper in the places where the letters were written hardened and rose, forming a relief. The inventor was not completely satisfied with his experiments; he wanted to make the letters even more convex. Whether he managed to create such a composition is unknown.

The recipe for “ink” remains a mystery precious stones" - ruby, sapphire, mother-of-pearl, the secret of which was held in ancient times by the monks of the Mongolian monastery of Erdeni-Tzu. The composition of the ink that monks-scribes in Buddhist monasteries of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka continue to use when copying sacred books is also unknown to the uninitiated.

Each time gave birth to its own ink, but the demand for it never went away. And it is no coincidence: according to Byron, one drop of ink is enough to arouse thoughts in millions of people.

Take note

An ink stain on fabric can be removed with a cotton swab dipped in a mixture of equal amounts of glycerin and ethyl alcohol. The tampon must be changed several times. The fabric is then washed with water.

According to Wikipedia, ink is a liquid dye used to create images using various tools. They came up with the idea of ​​using ink for writing a very long time ago, although they were significantly different from modern ones created using advanced technologies.

What people used for writing: coal, graphite, and finally, ink, thanks to which we are able to read ancient manuscripts. Unfortunately, it is now impossible to find out exactly what recipes the ancient ink was made from. It is only clear that their basis was plant-based.

Ancient ink, starting from the 15th century, is divided into boiled and iron. Both one and the other were made from plants rich in tannins. The raw materials were alder and oak bark, blueberries, and ink nuts. Surely everyone has seen these same ink nuts (galls), but few people know that they are called that. These are spherical outgrowths on oak leaves. To prepare iron ink, galls or oak bark were infused in an acidic solution, in warm place. Iron filings were added to the solution. The infusion process was long, up to 30 days. For thickness, gum (cherry resin) was added to the ink.

And the boiled ink was indeed boiled. By boiling, an extract was obtained from the bark, which was mixed with buckthorn berry juice. This ink was inferior to iron ink, it was less durable and not as bright, while iron ink was not afraid of moisture and faded little. Sometimes these inks were mixed.

In addition to ink, mushroom ink was also used for writing. The coprinus mushroom grows in wasteland, manure, and soil rich in nitrogen. As it ages, this mushroom does not dry out like all other mushrooms, but spreads into a watery mass of rich black color. This mass was used as ink. They were used in France 200 years ago.

Modern inks are complex in composition and include from 4 to 16 components, depending on the type of ink. Impossible modern world imagine without a ballpoint pen and without a printer. My inkjet printer ink can be divided into two main types: water-based ink and also pigment ink. Not only the clarity and color of photographs or documents, but also the durability of the printing device itself depends on the quality of the ink used in printing.

Classmates

Ancestors ink for inkjet printing there was regular ink for writing and drawing. Their history goes back to ancient times.

The Cairo Museum houses an artifact - a writing instrument consisting of an ink bottle, a writing stick and a sand pad that served as blotting paper. About 5 thousand years ago this device belonged to a court scribe in Ancient Egypt.

During excavations in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum on the shores of the Gulf of Naples, archaeologists discovered a clay vessel, at the bottom of which there was dried black ink - soot diluted in oil. By the way, a similar recipe for making ink 3000 years ago was used by the Egyptians, who burned the roots of the aquatic plant papyrus, and the resulting ash was mixed with gum - a glassy mass flowing from damaged cherry or acacia wood tissue.

Papyrus plant, the roots of which were used to make ink in ancient Egypt

In China, 2.5 thousand years ago, black ink was made from a mixture of soot, plant resin and an alkaline solution. This ink was very thick, so it was applied to the parchment not with feathers, but with brushes. After drying, they were easily separated from the carrier, especially on the folds.

Recipes for ink made from a decoction of the peels of green chestnuts, from ripe blueberries and elderberries, and from the peels of walnuts have been preserved to this day.

Chestnut	Blueberry
Black elderberry	Walnut

Plants that were used to make ink in ancient times

One of the ancient Roman recipes prescribed the use of large quantity grapes Such grapes should be eaten, and the seeds should be collected, dried and burned to obtain soot, which was a natural dye. To give the ink the required viscosity and consistency, the carbon black was combined and thoroughly mixed with a small amount vegetable oil. After this, the grape seed ink was ready for use.

Grape seeds - raw materials for ink production

Even ancient people noticed that octopuses and cuttlefish, in a moment of danger, release a camouflage ink bomb from special bags. People began to use the ink liquid of cephalopods for writing and drawing. To do this, bags of ink were removed from the body of octopuses and cuttlefish, dried in the sun, ground into dust, mixed with alkali, heated, treated with sulfuric acid, dried in the sun again and placed under a press. As a result of these manipulations, a dye called sepia was obtained, which is still used to make inks and paints.

Natural sepia was made from the ink sac of octopuses and cuttlefish

But the best black ink was made from round growths on oak leaves - galls. Such growths are formed when the gallworm insect lays its larvae in the leaf tissue. The tree, protecting itself from the invasion of larvae, surrounds them with a dense ring of overgrown shell. In ancient times, it was these growths that were ground into fine dust, infused in water, and glue and copper sulfate were added to the resulting mixture. Such ink had a pleasant shine and looked as if it had just come from the pen of a scribe. Walnut ink had one drawback: for the first 10-12 hours after application it remained completely transparent, and only after some time did it darken and acquire shine.

Growths - galls on oak leaves

To design religious books, Byzantine and Russian scribes made gold and silver ink. To do this, a small pea of ​​molasses was combined with the thinnest gold or silver leaves. The resulting mixture was thoroughly kneaded to a homogeneous consistency and used for writing. Then the honey was carefully washed away, and the elegant golden letters remained. Sweden still has a purple Bible written in silver ink. The age of this “silver” Bible is about 1.5 thousand years.

Bible written in silver ink

In Greece and ancient Rome in the 3rd century. BC Red royal ink was made from cinnabar and purple. Purple was obtained from the bodies of Brandaris clams, which were removed from their shells, placed in salt water, then sun-dried and boiled. From 10 thousand shellfish, only 1 gram of purple ink was obtained. According to rough calculations, 1 kg of purple ink should have cost 45 thousand gold marks. Red ink was forbidden to be used outside the imperial court under penalty of death. Special guards were assigned to them, who were responsible for the safety of the ink with their own heads.

Bolinus brandaris, from which Ancient Greece And Ancient Rome made purple ink

In Rus' there were no such strictures associated with purple ink. They learned to make them from scale insects, which were dried and ground into powder. Red ink was used by Russian scribes to highlight a paragraph, the so-called “red line”. It got its name due to the fact that at the beginning of each section the first letter was painted in red ink in the form of a picture. This made it easier to divide the text into chapters and understand it.

Larvae of the mealybug, from which red ink was made in Rus'

The mystery of ruby, sapphire and mother-of-pearl ink, which is called “gem ink,” has not yet been solved. The recipe for making such ink was kept strictly secret by Mongolian monks.

It is believed that the first printing device to use black ink was Johannes Gutenberg's press, invented in 1456. The press is equipped with removable typefaces depicting letters. From such letters it was possible to form words, phrases and entire sentences. The letters could be used multiple times. They were placed under a press on a sheet of paper and thus impressions were obtained.

Johannes Gutenberg Press

The invention of the press by Johannes Gutenberg greatly accelerated the development of inkjet inks.

In 1460 it was invented printing technology using linseed oil, which made it possible to apply images to metal surfaces. A reliable recipe for linen ink has not survived to this day. It is only known that the main components of such ink were polyoxides and plant pigments.

Several centuries later, vegetable and linseed oils became the main components of ink. This ink was liquid and dried slowly. At the same time, the first ink with the addition of petroleum distillate was produced.

In the 16th century there appeared iron ink, which were made from alder root, walnut or oak bark and ink nuts, set in a vessel with iron fragments. When alder bark was cooked, tannic acids were released from it, which, interacting with iron fragments, produced ferrous iron salts. Fresh ink was pale in color, but as it dried, the iron oxidized and darkened. The resulting prints were light-resistant and did not dissolve in water. To give the ink the necessary viscosity and strength, cherry glue (gum), ginger, cloves and alum were added to its composition.

In the 17th century, instead of iron fragments, copper sulfate began to be used in the production of iron ink. This made it possible to speed up the ink manufacturing process. Black ink obtained in this way began to be called “good ink” in Rus'.

In 1847 German chemist-organic, Professor Runge made ink from a tropical extract sandalwood. The sap of this tree contains hematoxylin, which when oxidized produces a purple-black pigment. Therefore, the ink developed by Professor Runge had a purple tint.

Professor Runge - inventor of sandalwood ink

In 1870, 414 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, ink was used in the first typewriters. Such machines were equipped with a striking mechanism with alphabetic characters and an ink ribbon. By striking the tape, the letterers transferred the corresponding ink letters and signs onto the paper. One of the first models of typewriters is shown in the figure below.

One of the first typewriter models

The next stage in the development of ink was the appearance of alizarin ink, which was invented in 1885 by the Saxon teacher Christian Augustan Leongardi. Leonhardi's ink was made from the juice of gall nuts with the addition of crappie from the roots of the oriental madder plant. Madder specks provided the colorless cloudy gall ink with a rich blue-green hue. Later, crappies were replaced with a synthetic dye, and gall nuts with gallic acid. So alizarin ink became completely synthetic and cheaper to manufacture. Even later, a synthetic dye of a beautiful bright purple color was found. Ink made using this dye is called aniline.

A century after the invention of alizarin and aniline inks, the first inkjet printing systems were developed in the late 1970s. In 1976, the first inkjet printer from IBM, the Model 6640, saw the light of day; in 1977, the first inkjet printer rolled off the production line of Siemens; in 1978, the development new technology BubbleJet inkjet printing was announced by Canon Corporation, and a little later innovative drop-on-demand inkjet printing technology was introduced by Hewlett Packard.

The first generation of inkjet printers used aqueous ink, consisting of ink and water. Water-based ink, due to its uniform consistency and the absence of solid particles, impregnates not only the surface, but also the deep layers of paper. They produce very bright and vibrant prints, much more colorful than pigment inks. The advantage of aqueous inks is their cost-effectiveness, the disadvantage is their instability to sun rays and moisture. Such ink quickly fades in the sun and is washed off plain water. Prints made with water-based ink should be stored in a dry, dark place, preferably in a photo album.

The development of inkjet printing technology has led to the emergence of photo printers designed to print high-quality photographs. These photo printers use pigment ink, which contains water, pigments and special additives. Pigments are microscopic particles of solid matter of organic or inorganic origin. The size of such particles is 500 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, so they pass freely through the print head nozzles. The advantage of pigment inks is their resistance to exposure sunlight and moisture, the drawback is insufficient brightness compared to water-based ink.

Having produced the first pigment inks, manufacturers immediately began to improve their composition. Today chemical industry is working to improve the realism and variety of shades of inkjet inks, reduce the size of ejected droplets, improve light fastness and moisture resistance, etc.

Inkjet color schemes are expanding. If the first inkjet printers had four-color cartridges with a standard set of CMYK colors (black, yellow, magenta and cyan), today they produce extended CMYK schemes consisting of six, eight and even eleven colors.

Innovative developments in the field of inkjet printing include sympathetic ink, which appear under the influence of ultraviolet light, disappearing ink, which discolor when heated, fluorescent ink that glow in the dark, silver ink, conducting electrical impulses, textile ink, which print excellently on fabric, latex, which contain artificial latex polymers and some other types of inks. These inks represent the future of inkjet printing.

Zatoplyaev Ivan

Research paper “This Amazing Ink” describing the experience of making ink according to an ancient recipe.

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Municipal educational institution

average secondary school № 45

Traktorozavodsky district of Volgograd

School research competition

and schoolchildren's projects"I am a researcher"

Direction: "The world around us"

RESEARCH WORK

This amazing ink

Head: Natalia Anatolyevna Dubrasova,

teacher of the first qualification category

Student: 4th grade

Zatoplyaev Ivan Alexandrovich

Volgograd 2013

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3

1. History of ink………………………………………………………...4

2. A little about the inkwell……………………………………………………………7

1. Interesting facts about ink…………………………………………8

1. Ink recipes……………………………………………………….8

4.1 Ink from ink nuts……………………………….9

4.2. Chestnut ink………………………………………………………9

4.3. Elderberry ink……………………………………………9

4.4. Ink from walnut peels……………………………9

4.5. Tannin ink……………………………………………...9

4.6. Stationery alizarin ink…………………………9

4.7. Alizarin ink according to Leonhardi……………………….10

4.8. Aniline ink………………………………………………………10

1. Experiment……………. ……………………………………………..10

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………11

Literature………………………………………………………………...11

Introduction

One day, after reading an assignment in a textbook on “ Literary reading"about the chronicler who prepared ink from old rusty nails, kvass, honey, sour cabbage soup, ink nuts (growths on oak leaves), I became interested in how they were actually made before. I decided to find out the history of ink, its varieties and recipes. I had a hypothesis that you can make ink yourself at home. And I decided to try to make the ancient ink with which A. S. Pushkin wrote his poems, especially since all the components of this ink can be found in our time.

Purpose of the study:study the history of origin, manufacturing methods, types of ink, find interesting facts about ink, test your hypothesis about the possibility of making ink yourself.

Tasks:

1. Study information on this topic using literature and Internet resources.

1. Making ink at home.

Object of study:ink information.

Subject of research:making ink at home.

Research methods:collection and analysis of information, experiment.

Research tools:computer, Internet, printed publications, materials and substances for making ink.

1. History of ink

It is difficult to meet a person who does not use ink and does not know what it is. But how many of us know the history of the origin, chemical composition ink, production process.

Ink appeared when humanity had a need to write something down on paper. Then people different nations invented their own ink to preserve their history for future generations.

The oldest ink recipe found by archaeologists belongs to the ancient Egyptians. Long before our era, they used for writing a mixture of ash from burning papyrus roots and a solution of gum - sticky thick juice of acacia or cherry. The same composition was used in China 2.5 thousand years ago. Chinese ink was a mixture of soot and resins dissolved in alkalis. It would be more correct to call such ink ink. This ink had a very significant drawback: over time, it became brittle and bounced off the paper at the folds. In addition, it was quite thick and did not flow well from the pen. Perhaps this is why in the East they preferred to paint hieroglyphs with a brush.

In ancient times, people made ink from... cuttlefish. Cuttlefish and their octopus cousins ​​have a special ink sac from which the animals release an “ink bomb” in a moment of danger for camouflage.

The ink bags are dried in the sun, crushed, lye is added and heated, then sulfuric acid is added, again dried and pressed. The result is sepia, which is still widely used by artists today. This is probably the oldest ink in the world, 100 million years old!

Ink appeared in Europe much later. In the 3rd century BC. in Greece and Rome several types of ink were used. Reds, "court guards", were used for state documents and were strictly guarded by guards. Black ones were made from soot, fruit seeds, charcoal and bone charcoal.

In ancient Rome, red “court ink” was made from purple and cinnabar, with which only government documents. The process of obtaining purple was very labor-intensive. At first, literally hundreds of thousands, millions of shells were collected.

In southern Italy, a “shell mountain” has been preserved, consisting almost entirely of the shells of the mollusk Brandaris. The bodies of mollusks were removed from the shells and placed in salt water. Then they dried them in the sun for three or four days, then boiled them, and as a result, out of every ten thousand shellfish they received... only one gram of paint! Most likely, this became known after the German chemist P. Friedke reproduced the ancient purple in the 19th century. Having processed 12 thousand shellfish, he extracted 1.5 grams. coloring matter. Approximately 1 kg. The purple was supposed to cost 45 thousand gold marks. Apparently, it was not the brightness and beauty, but the price of the dye that aroused the delight of the courtiers.

The complex technology of producing paint and its high quality (fabrics dyed purple did not fade for 200 years) made purple dyes and, accordingly, ink extremely expensive. For obvious reasons, a completely different type of ink has become widespread. At first it was black paint, which was used both in painting and writing. Ancient Roman artists made ink from fruit seeds, grapevines, soft wood, soot, charcoal and bone charcoal.
And red ink was considered sacred in those days: only the emperor could write with it. There was even an imperial decree that prohibited the use of red ink outside the imperial court under penalty of death. This ink was very expensive and was guarded by special guards.

In Rus' there were no such strictures associated with red ink. They were made from scale insects, which were ground into powder. Red ink was very necessary for our ancestors. Why? Because in the 11th-13th centuries, monks who copied books did not separate words when writing; everything was written in continuous text. This was difficult to read. Therefore, all sections in the book were marked with a red letter, often drawn in the form of a picture. This made it easier to read. This is where the concept of “red line” - paragraph - comes from.

Gold and silver ink were very beautiful; they were most often used to decorate religious books. But the use of gold and silver to make ink was not at all out of the ordinary. Byzantine and Russian scribes ground honey with thin gold and silver leaves, then washed the honey, but the elegant gold and silver letters remained. The library of Uppsala University in Sweden houses a “silver bible” that is more than one and a half thousand years old. It is written in silver ink on red parchment.

The oldest Russian ink recipe is soot with gum (cherry glue), diluted in ordinary water. This is the so-called "smoked ink". The 15th century gave new recipe- “boiled ink” - ink made from a decoction of the bark of tanning plants. Alder roots, walnut or oak bark were used to make them. From this they boiled ink wort and dipped pieces of iron into it. Gum (cherry glue) was added to strengthen the ink, and alum, ginger and cloves were added to reduce viscosity.

In the 18th century, iron sulfate appeared, which began to be used instead of pieces of rusty iron, which sharply increased the speed of preparing ink, which in Rus' began to be called “good ink.”

There are also several exotic ink recipes, including chestnut ink - from a decoction of green chestnut peels, from ripe elderberries and walnut peels. Ink was also made from blueberries. The “Decree on Blueberry Ink” was preserved in a manuscript of the 16th-17th centuries.

But such ink has long since become history. They were replaced by ink from gall nuts covering oak leaves. These are growths on leaves and branches in which the larva of the gallworm insect lives. The juice was squeezed out of gall nuts, mixed with iron sulfate, and a little glue was added to create permanent ink with a beautiful sheen. Surviving manuscripts written with this ink look as if they were fresh from the pen. But such ink also had a drawback: what was written could only be read after 10-12 hours, and before that the text was colorless.

In 1847, Professor Runge prepared ink from an extract of logwood (sandalwood), which is widespread in the tropics. The sap of this tree contains chemical substance hematoxylin, which upon oxidation turns into a purple-black pigment. American version of ink received widespread, especially as school ink. The best variety The domestic logwood ink was deep black Pegasus ink.

In 1885, the Saxon teacher Leonhardi made a revolution in the “ink business”. He invented alizarin ink. They were also gall-like, but not colorless-turbid, but intensely blue-green. On paper they faded to deep black. This was achieved using krappa, a product of special processing of the roots of the oriental madder plant. Later, crappies were replaced by synthetic dyes, and ink balls by tannin or gallic acid. However, soon this invention also had a competitor - aniline ink, for example, violet. This is a synthetic dye diluted in water.

There are a great many recipes for invisible (sympathetic) ink. In the past, they were successfully used by spies. There are many methods for this type of secret writing, and they all use secret or "sympathetic" ink - colorless or slightly colored liquids. The messages they write become visible only after heating, treatment with special reagents or in ultraviolet or infrared rays. There are many known recipes for such ink. Secret agents of Ivan the Terrible wrote their reports with onion juice. The letters became visible when the paper was heated. Lenin used lemon juice or milk for secret writing. To develop the letter in these cases, it is enough to iron the paper with a hot iron or hold it over the fire for several minutes.

Such ink is still created today. For example, Japan recently released ink that disappears from paper after two days - for temporary notes in the margins of books.

Ink made from milk, lemon, from insects and cabbage soup, from cuttlefish and berries, from gold and silver... Now humanity writes with ink made by chemical means. They are high quality and cheap. Each time gave birth to its own ink, but the demand for it never went away. And it is no coincidence: according to Byron, one drop of ink is enough to arouse thoughts in millions of people.

2. A little about the inkwell

Archaeologists in the ash-covered ancient Roman city of Herculaneum found a clay cup with some dark sediment visible at the bottom. It turned out that this is the oldest inkwell known on earth! For more than a thousand years, “ink” - ordinary soot diluted in oil - dried in it. Quite recently, a sensation occurred at the National Museum of Bashkiria. For more than 30 years, the museum held an inkwell from the time of Genghis Khan (13th century). This exhibit was brought to the museum by a peasant. He found a metal vessel darkened with time while plowing the ground. For 30 years, none of the museum employees could attribute this vessel. It was assumed that it had a religious purpose. And then, quite by chance, one of the museum employees saw a rarity on the pages of an archival volume. It turned out that there are only three such inkwells in the world: one is in the collection of Nasser de Khalili, the other is in the Hermitage, and the third is in Iran.

Scientists believe that the decor of the inkwell is similar to the design on the bowl, created in western Iran, and now stored in the Bargello Museum in Florence. The inscription on one of the inkwells similar to the one found turned out to be a wish: fame and prosperity, wealth and happiness, prosperity and prosperity, grace and support.

The scribe wore such an inkwell on a strap around his neck and wrote down the khan’s orders on a silk scroll, dipping a reed stick into the inkwell, which was called “kalam” (compare with the “kalamus” of ancient Rome!). Minerals diluted in water served as ink.

There is a text cast on Genghis Khan's copper inkwell, which has not yet been deciphered.

3. Interesting facts about ink

Among the materials used to prepare ink, a significant proportion were... mushrooms. In wastelands, nitrogen-rich soil, and manure, the coprinus fungus is often found. Its conical caps on a thin stalk rise 20-30 centimeters above the soil surface. They don't exist for long. As they age, coprinuses literally blur, forming a watery mass of intense black color. This is what is used as ink. Such ink was used in France 200 years ago.

In ancient Rome, anyone who dared to steal a bottle of ink from the imperial office was immediately sentenced to death.

Back in the last century, the great inventor Edison invented ink for the blind. As soon as you wrote a text with them and waited a little, the paper in the places where the letters were written hardened and rose, forming a relief.

The recipe for “precious stone ink” – ruby, sapphire, mother-of-pearl – remains a mystery, the secret of which was held in ancient times by the monks of the Mongolian monastery of Erdeni-Tzu. The composition of the ink, which Buddhist monks continue to use in Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka, is also unknown to the uninitiated.

When you read about old methods of obtaining ink, it seems that they were invented by big gourmands. What they didn’t add to the ink! Honey and molasses, blueberries and elderberries, milk and eggs, kvass and yogurt, even sour cabbage soup.

Among the ancient inhabitants Central Asia They also had their secrets. Once upon a time, books and manuscripts were found in the caves of the Mangishlak Peninsula. Scientists have discovered that the ink they are written with contains sugar and millet.

It is interesting that to this day the best black paint is prepared from soot obtained by burning grape seeds.

4. Ink recipes

The inks currently used can be divided into two groups. The biggest and important group form black ink containing tannic acid. Ink of the second group does not contain tannic acids.
The first group of inks is still the most commonly used and, moreover, the cheapest. They are prepared mainly from tannic and gallic acids or from substances containing tannin. The preparation of this ink is based on the property of an aqueous extract of tannins to form tannic acid iron with iron salts, which is a coloring agent. By using gum arabic as a thickener, the coloring matter remains in a fine distribution of the liquid.

4.1. Ink from ink nuts

To prepare ordinary stationery or school ink by infusing or drawing in cold water, take:
3 parts ink nuts (galls),
2 parts iron sulfate,
2 parts gum arabic (acacia resin),
60 parts water.
The nut is ground into powder and poured into a glass bottle and doused with water. In another vessel, dissolve iron sulfate and gum arabic separately. The infusion of the nut should stand for several days until the water removes all the tannin from it, while the vitriol and gum arabic completely dissolve within a few hours. Both solutions are poured together, mixed well and, after allowing to stand for a day or two, carefully drained to separate the liquid from the sediment.

4.2. Chestnut ink

Boil 200g of green chestnut peel in 1 liter of water for several hours, filter the broth and mix with iron sulfate and alum.

4.3. Elderberry ink

100g of ripe black elderberries are crushed and the juice is squeezed out. 2g of alum and 5g of iron sulfate are dissolved in 5g of vinegar. And add this solution to the juice of the berries.

4.4. Walnut peel ink

100g of green walnut peel is boiled in 400g of water, 4g of iron sulfate and 4g of alum. The results are durable and beautiful ink.

4.5. Tannin ink

Tannin -2.44g, gallic acid - 0.77g, iron sulfate - 3g, gum arabic - 1g, hydrochloric acid– 0.25g, carbolic acid-0.1g, water 100 ml. Dissolve the ingredients in water with frequent stirring.

4.6. Alizarin stationery ink

1st solution (ink nuts – 600g, boiled water – 2l)

2nd solution (indigo powder - 40g, sulfuric acid 50% 200g0

The indigo is placed in a glazed clay pot and watered with sulfuric acid, then allowed to settle for 24 hours and carefully added little by little 2 liters of boiled water, 90 g of clean iron filings finely ground in a porcelain mortar and 60 g of chalk. The resulting liquid is filtered and the filtered first solution is poured into it. This ink produces a green color on paper that dries to an intense blue-black color.

4.7. Alizarin ink according to Leonhardi

3.5 g of ink nuts crushed into large grains and 250 g of maroon root are left to stand for several days with 10 l warm water; filter, replenish the evaporated water with new water and add 100 g of indigo solution, 433 g of ferrous sulfate and 166 g of vinegar-iron salt solution while shaking. The liquid is left to stand quietly for 8-10 days and then drained into the sediment.
A solution of acetic iron salt is prepared by treating 2 wt. parts of iron wire, turning or other shavings or sawdust, 20 wt. tsp wood vinegar.

4.8. Aniline ink

1.3 g of paratolluidine is dissolved in 7.7 g of aniline, after which 15 g of diluted hydrochloric acid and 15 g of gum arabic are added to the solution. The resulting composition is thoroughly mixed and dissolved in a separate container in 20 g of heated distilled water, 2.6 g of copper chloride, 2 g of table salt, 1.3 g of ammonium chloride and 1.3 g of Berthollet salt, after which 11 g of gum arabic are added to this solution. Before use, mix equal parts of both solutions.

5. Experiment

I was very interested in the possibility of making ancient ink myself, and I decided to conduct an experiment to create it. From the above list of ink recipes, the one made from ink nuts seemed the most interesting to me.

We collected ink nuts in the forest, collected cherry resin, which we decided to replace gum arabic, and bought iron sulfate. We crushed the ink nuts, put them in a glass jar, poured them cold water and insisted for several days. In another container, iron sulfate was diluted and cherry resin was dissolved. Then all the solutions were mixed and we got wonderful ink that you can write with. The experiment was a success!

So, if, suddenly, we find ourselves on a desert island on which oak trees grow and we have a piece of rusty iron and a piece of paper at hand, we can always send it using bottle mail to our mom and dad and the most best friends news.

Conclusion

After conducting research, I learned a lot of new and interesting information about ink, various types and how to obtain them. In addition, I confirmed my hypothesis that you can make real ink yourself at home. In the future I would like to do work with sympathetic (invisible) ink.

I hope that after my talk you will be able to make your own ink and will treat it with more respect because ink has long story and play a huge role in our daily lives.

When and how did ink appear?http://vse-znaykin.ru/chernila.php

If you were stranded on a desert island, you would, of course, want to send a message via bottle mail to your mom and dad and your best friends. You managed to find a piece of paper in your pocket, and then you discovered that you had neither pen nor ink with you. What to do? We need to remember the history of these things. Let a reed stick with a pointed end serve as a handle for you, like the ancient Egyptians. What about ink? There are many ways to prepare them. You can make them from the ash of burnt papyrus roots mixed with the sticky sap of acacia. Or mix carbon black with vegetable oil like the ancient Romans did. During excavations in the Italian city of Herculaneum, a clay cup was found, at the bottom of which some kind of dark sediment could be seen. It turned out that it was an inkwell with dried ancient ink made from soot and oil. They are completely dry, because about a thousand years have passed.

But if you want real, full-blooded ink, strong and timeless, make it from ink nuts. Just don't look all over the island for the ink tree. Look for oak because inknuts are simply growths on oak. They appear next to acorns on oak leaves, like blisters on the skin from a mosquito bite.

In old Russian books there is a recipe for ink made from ink nuts: “Ink nuts in Rhine wine in the sun or in the warmth of mochiti. Then, after straining that yellow vodka from the bottle through a towel and squeezing out the nuts, put it in another bottle and put in blackening vitriol, grind it into flour, stir it often with a spoon, and leave it in a warm place for a few days, and it will be good ink.” A complex recipe on a desert island. But don't be discouraged! You can do without Rhine wine, and without getting wet in the sun. You can simply squeeze out the juice of the nuts and add a little wood gluten. And if you can also find iron sulfate, the ink will turn out very good. Thick, durable, they will not lose their color on paper even after centuries.

Ink made from ink nuts has only one drawback: they begin to turn black only after 10-12 hours. So we will be able to see our own message no earlier than half a day has passed.

An inhabitant of a desert island can also be advised to prepare ink from logwood (sandalwood) - on the islands south seas there are many of them. And most importantly, campesh produces ink of different colors: purple, green, blue.

But ink made from oak, alder and ash bark (which is boiled in water, and then a piece of iron is thrown into the brew, and a ladle of sour cabbage soup is added, and a mug of honey kvass) is more suitable for a memoirist middle zone Russia. It was with this ink that they wrote during the reign of Ivan III. Information about the final deliverance from the Tatars in the 15th century has reached us thanks to the durability of ink made from cabbage soup.

Book scribes, trying to make the manuscript as beautiful as possible, wrote the initial letters in gold ink. They were prepared like this: honey was mixed with molasses and gold leaf, everything was thoroughly ground. And the resulting liquid was used to write. Then the honey was carefully washed away, and only the golden letters remained.

Red ink! For us, this is, first of all, the color of a mark given by a teacher, an error corrected in a word or example... And two thousand years ago in Rome, red ink was considered sacred. No one except the emperor had the right to write with them. Roman ink, however, was washed off very easily; you could even lick it off with your tongue.

So they wouldn't be useful for school. Students would simply eat up their bad grades, and that’s not fair.

The German teacher Christian Augustan Leongardi showed real concern for his students. He invented alizarin ink. It was a whole revolution in the “ink business”. It happened in 1855. Leonhardi's ink was also made from ink nuts, but the inventor added a substance to them calledmadder.Krapp is extracted from the roots of the oriental madder plant. Later, a synthetic substitute for crappie was found, and ink nuts were replaced with gallic acid, similar in composition. So alizarin ink began to be made entirely from artificial substances. Making them has become easier and cheaper.

But the inventors didn't stop there. They soon found a synthetic dye that, when diluted with water, turned into a beautiful purple ink. They are calledaniline.

Do you know about invisible ink? They are called "sympathetic". When you write with them, there are no traces left. But if you then heat a sheet of paper with an iron or moisten it with some juice or solution (different developers for different sympathetic inks), then brown, blue or purple letters will appear on a clean white surface. They would hardly be useful to an inhabitant of a desert island. But for spies and revolutionaries, this is a godsend! Between the lines of an ordinary letter, you can write the most important information in sympathetic ink, and no one will guess about it. And in Japan, they recently produced ink that disappears from paper after two days. They are convenient to use when working with a book when you need to make notes and underlines.

Everyone knows the great inventor T. Edison. He invented the phonograph, the carbon filament light bulb, and many other wonderful things, including ink for the blind. The pale gray ink had the following property: as soon as you wrote text with it, the paper on which the letters were written rose, hardened and formed a relief. The blind could easily “read” these raised letters with their sensitive fingers.