ii

THESIS

MAKING PRINTING INK

Sydney Jean Reisen

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the Degree of Master of Arts
Art and the Book Program
Corcoran College of Art + Design
Washington, DC
Spring 2013
 iii

©2013
Sydney Jean Reisen
All Rights Reserved
 i

Corcoran College of Art + Design

May 7, 2013

WE HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER OUR

SUPERVISION BY SYDNEY REISEN ENTITLED MAKING PRINTING INK BE
ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING, IN PART, REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN ART AND THE BOOK.

Graduate Thesis Committee

Signature of Student
Sydney Jean Reisen
Printed Name of Student

Signature of Advisor
Casey Smith
Print Name of Advisor

Signature of Program Director

Kerry McAleer-Keeler
Print Name of Program Director
 ii

Table of Contents

Signature Page……………………………………………………………i
Table of Contents………………………………………………………..ii
Thesis Statement………………………………………………………..iii
Introduction: Uncertainty in the Studio…………………………………1
Chapter 1: Two Mystery Ingredients……………………………………6
Chapter 2: Pigments……………………………………………………..8
Chapter 3: Binders……………………………………………………..16
Chapter 4: Extenders and Additives…………………………………...22
Chapter 5: Incorporation……………………………………………….24
Conclusion……………………………………………………………..29
Bibliography…………………………………………………………...32
 iii

Thesis Statement

Ink making renders control of an integral part of the art making process in the

artist’s hands. However, information on the process is not readily accessible and there are

generations of printers that have been raised on ink in a can or tube that accept this

manufactured material as the standard. Why more artists do not make their own ink is

baffling when assessing both the results and it relative ease of manufacture. This thesis

will reveal the process and argue that there are more reasons to make ink than not to.
 1

Introduction

Uncertainty in the Studio

An appreciation of colors is as old as civilization. The use of pigment and

dyes is so universal in human culture that we scarcely notice it. Yet colors
were once among the most precious and expensive of substances.1
-Francesco Brunello
Colour is truly fluid: it spills over subjects and seeps between disciplines;
and no one area can mop it up and claim a privileged or proprietorial
relationship with the subject.2
-David Batchelor

Making ink is a laborious process, but this is not the only deterrent for artists.

Finding information about pigments, binders, mixing ratios and proper grinding methods

are not an internet or key word search away. Recipes can be found piecemeal in sources

that range from the archeological, which posit that early cave painters employed animal

fat to bind pigments, to medieval recipes from thirteenth century manuscripts that are

vague and extremely poisonous. These examples and others like them are helpful in that

they allude to the wide variety of techniques for making ink throughout the centuries and

how the recipes can depend on the natural resources available in a region but, they remain

far from instructional tools. When researching the topic it can seem as though the

knowledge of how ink is produced has been fragmented and buried, if not forgotten but,

thankfully, this is not the case. The ink making tradition is alive in a small number of

book and printmakers who continue to mix and mull their wares. These artists would

have it no other way and have chosen to make ink with full knowledge of the quality and

capabilities of their manufactured counterparts. However, this informed decision-making

is unilateral. Rarely are those artists who do not make ink aware of the quality and

1
Francesco Brunello, The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind, (Milan: Neri Pozza, 1973)
2
David Bachelor, Chromophobia, (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2000)
 2

capability of hand mixed color, the majority never having considered it an option or view

it as unnecessary, nostalgic, and in an extreme reaction by one contemporary book artist,

“worshipping the alter of craft pain.” This thesis will attempt to outline the criteria from

which an artist can make an informed studio decision by reintroducing the forgotten and,

for the most part unchanged instruction on the process of hand making ink and argue that

there is in fact a choice to be made.

As mentioned, the search for practical ink making techniques is troublesome, but

a kind of solidarity forms with other researchers when it becomes clear that this irony has

been encountered and bemoaned. A surprising number of books about ink begin by

lamenting that there is not more written on the subject. David N. Carvalho in his book

Forty Centuries of Ink goes so far as to call this neglect “criminal.” 3

“There is no ‘History of Ink’ but of ink history there is a wealth of material,

although historians have neglected to record information about the very substance by

which they sought to keep and transmit the chronicles they desire to preserve.”4

Carvalho writes in 1904 and, for the most part, is concerned with iron gall ink for

a quill or fountain pen which requires a different composition than the printing inks this

paper will concern itself with. However, the neglect to chronicle ink formulation is

spread over the entire industry and all its applications. It is not until the first half of the

Twentieth Century, when the role of ink maker had long since been shifted to the

chemists and away from the pressman that books begin to be published on the subject

with any focus or regularity. These books are manual-like and maintain a bias against the

3
David Carvalho, Forty Centuries of Ink Making (New York: The Banks Law Publishing Company, 1904),
iv.
4
Ibid., iii.
 3

old recipes in order to tote the strides of the new ink technologies and in doing so, reveal

the former in clear terms for what seems like the first time. A quote by Herbert Jay Wolfe

sets the tone of this period nicely. He writes that ”while there have been many books

written on the art of printing in all its branches, this is not true of the subject of printing

ink, upon which all printing depends. This apparent neglect of the subject undoubtedly

was to the aura of mystery surrounding the manufacture of printing inks and to the many

supposedly secret formulas and processes upon which the industry, up until recent times,

has been based.”5 Helpfully, Wolfe’s book Printing and Litho Inks and those of his

contemporaries go on to elaborate on the manufacture of the “supposedly secret

formulas.”

Ink makers of old kept an “aura of mystery surrounding” their business because

their livelihoods depended on it. More contemporarily, the secrets of the process have

migrated; they have moved from hiding the treatment of the basic ingredients, to hiding

the synthetic compounds that are added to the inks for standardization and manufacturing

purposes. These current industry secrets are kept for the same monetary reasons as the

historic equivalent; the difference being that technology did not change at the same pace,

therefore the urge to keep up with the proverbial Jones was not as great. The succession

of ink making books written by chemists in the first half of last century reads like there is

an implied competition between them and that the contestants are in a frenzy to be the

next to modify ink differently for greater profit. These books follow almost identical

organizations and layout as if one author was merely recycling the information of the

previous, exposing their competitor’s trade secrets, and then claiming the newest

5
Herbert Jay Wolfe, Printing and Litho Inks(New York: McNair-Dorland Company, 1957), 15.
 4

breakthroughs in ink science for themselves. From a contemporary vantage, when there

are accumulated reasons for industry and technology to be suspect, these books can read

like a window into the corruption behind one facet of a larger industrial complex; a

system that is exposes itself for a brief moment in the texts as not only willing, but

seeking to pollute its product for a dollar. These ink chemists unabashedly describe what

can be added to the inks in order to increase profit margin. This list of “extenders”

includes barium sulphate, whiting, feldspar, hydrated aluminum silicate6, paraffin or wax,

waste sulphite cellulose liquors, and nitro cellulose7— to name only a few. It goes

without saying that the introduction of ingredient that will reduce the frequency of

pigment will corrupt the integrity of color. The manipulation of the product is described

in such detail that with contemporary reference, a reader begins to infer that some of the

same practices may be ongoing today. As this thesis will outline, color is not naturally a

“buttery,” or glossy substance housed in a tube or can and it cannot be manipulated at

will like the product that we have all been trained on. The consistency of manufactured

inks is the foremost clue that there is still something amiss. But, it is only with a hand-

made reference that this conclusion can be drawn.

The basic ingredients of ink have not changed since the invention of the printing

press, only their manufacture has been rendered safer. These ingredients are all an artist

needs to make their own ink. By making ink you will never have to wonder what is really

inside, and because there is such a difference between the handmade to that of the

manufactured, there is a sense of control that develops from a place where most artists are

6
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology(New York: Reinhold Publishing
Corporation, 1940), 155.
7
Ibid., 77.
 5

unaware that they lack it. This knowledge alone makes experimentation valuable.

However, as the long and intentional mystique surrounding the process of ink making is

dispelled we, like the chemists, will exchange one mystery for another because what the

artist earns in terms of control they also lose in constancy.

Handmade color does not behave like the industrial made inks we have been

trained with. Industrial inks are held to unwarranted standards that seem to have been

driven by what science could achieve or business could deceive rather than what was in

the best interest or desired by the consumer. Conversely, even if these standards evolved

from a benign desire to make studio practice easier, what started as good intention has

left entire generations of artists’ dependent — without consent—on manufactured ink

products. Making all the colors behave similarly in terms of viscosity, opacity, drying

etc., is not in the nature of pigments. If nature is allowed to run its course red and blue do

not always make purple and the words ‘chunky,’ ‘wet,’ and ‘sandy’ can enter the

dictionary of color. Artists are of all persuasions but, if it can be said that they share a

trait it may be this: artist are more inclined than the layman to accept inconsistency or

even appreciate it in life. Hopefully, this sentiment translates to the studio. If nothing

else, this paper should cause a new awareness of the industry surrounding ink that makes

choices for the artist. In the best case, this paper will direct an artist to discovering the

true mysteries and behavior of color and find it an unexpected and useful resource.
 6

Chapter 1

Two Mystery Ingredients

Why there is not more information on ink making is made all the more baffling

because the basis is simple. Depending on whom you ask there are either two or three

ingredients. The minimum requirement for results that work is only two ingredients: the

pigment and the binder. For many printers of old and artists of present, this two-fold

recipe suffices for all their purposes. However, some people like one contemporary

photogravure printmaker, believe that ink is not ink unless it incorporates rosin “if there

is not varnish it is not ink but simply a mixture of pigment and oil.” There are different

reasons throughout the centuries as to why rosin (aged or treated pine resin) is added but,

overall it is prized for imparting gloss and richness to the ink while aiding in the

polymerization that keeps the ink on the surface of the paper. The quote above uses the

term “varnish” to imply that rosin has already been added to the ink and this diction

selection brings up an important point of lexicon one encounters when doing research on

this subject. The language of ink making, much like the language of artists’ books, is not

consistent. The same words change meaning over time and two people, depending on

locale and education, will use the same term to imply different things. For example,

Martin Dominique Fertel in 1723 pinpoints the name change from linseed oil to varnish

at a different juncture of the making process than the printer mentioned above. Fertel

instructs the reader to test the consistency of the treated linseed oil “with our fingers, and

if it is gluey, and draws out like weak glue in threads between our fingers, it is an evident
 7

mark that it is sufficiently done, and that it changes its name of oil into that of varnish.”8

Diction confusion of this kind is especially apparent in the pigments where pigments

change names over thousands of years, hundreds of languages and according to location.

It is important to note that while what is discussed below is directed at oil based

inks for the various printmaking processes, the formulas presented can be modified for

water based inks or those used in different media. The ideas and implications remain

exactly the same.

8
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured(London: Longman, Rees,
Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1832), 51.
 8

Chapter 2

Pigments

Pigments are used primarily for color and opacity but also serve to stiffen
the vehicle and give it more body.9
Pigments consist of very small particles of colored material suspended in a
liquid binder or vehicle… Pigments are insoluble, and keep their physical
characteristics when dispersed or suspended in liquid. Dyes, on the other
hand, totally dissolve when placed in liquid and stain the surface or
substrate. This is unlike a pigment in a vehicle, which forms a layer, or
film, on the surface of a substrate.10

There are two types of pigments: the organic and the inorganic. Inorganic

includes metals, mineral and ores such as copper, iron, titanium and zinc that are finely

ground. The inorganic raw materials that are best suited for making inks are plentiful and

the best among them have been proven by time. The bulls in the caves of Lascaux

(15,000 BC) are painted with red ochre and to this day there is no better way to achieve

the warm earth tones imparted on those cave walls.

Organic pigments are plant or animal based and can be derived straight from

plants like saffron, turmeric, and indigo or take the form of what is called a “lake

pigment.” A lake pigment is the organic extract of the plant, the color or dye, that is

affixed to an inorganic insoluble base or mordant, such as calcium carbonate (chalk),

gypsum or aluminum hydroxide (alum) which absorbs and solidifies the color for use as a

9
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 30.
10
Ian Sidaway, The Color Mixing Bible(New York: Watson-Guphill Publications, 2002), 20.
 9

pigment.11 For the most part, the use of lake pigments have become obsolete and their

value to the palette forgotten. “Due to the time and labor required for their production,

the natural dyestuffs (organic pigments) were quite expensive, and this fact, in

conjunction with their lack of uniformity and tinctorial strength, caused them to be

discarded almost completely upon the introduction of the synthetic dyestuffs.”12 Carleton

Ellis adds to this reasoning in his book Printing Inks: Their Chemistry and Technology by

saying that these organic pigments have been eliminated for reasons of “lower cost,

greater uniformity and wider color range of synthetic preparations.”13 Just because a

pigment is troublesome to manufacture and does not meet the tinctoral strength the

industry has created as an arbitrary standard, does not mean that the artist will not find it

useful. In antiquity the transparent quality of lake pigments have used to great effect in

layering. Francois Delmare and Bernard Guineau describe the techniques of an

anonymous artist known as the Boucicant Master in their book Colors: the Story of Dyes

and Pigments.14 They say “he took extraordinary care in the shading of colors to

represent the play of light and shadow. He applies organic lakes to increase the number of

shades; in flames, for example, red lake from brazilwood was laid over vermilion to

create a bright effect; a columbine lake was layered over lapis-lazuli blue to achieve red-

violet.”15 Instead of having a naturally transparent pigment in the artists’ palette, ink

manufacturers have instead created ink modifiers such as transparent base or Easy Wipe

that can be used to modify an ink that contains a pigment that might not be ideally suited

11
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002), 55.
12
Herbert Jay Wolfe, Printing and Litho Ink, 131.
13
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 31.
14
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments(New York: Harry
Abrams, Inc, 2000)
15
Ibid., 64.
 10

to transparent needs. This makes sense for the bottom line but the effect of this cost

saving measure is the manufacturers having control over the methods by which the artists

can attain her desired effects. It is important to note that lake pigments are water-soluble

and cannot be applied to either planographic (lithographic) or intaglio because the water

that is necessary for these processes will leach the color into unintended areas.

The pigments described below are either historically significant, naturally

occurring, or have been experimented with firsthand. Because the majority of the

pigments listed below are natural, the way they behave can vary widely according where

they were harvested and how they were ground. Some historical pigments are still used

because there is no better or cheaper synthetic substitute. Some have become obsolete for

good reason like mercuric vermillion and others are obsolete for lesser reasons like the

lakes. Color does not have to be a Pantone chart, looking at color through a pigment is a

different way of seeing and thinking it. Color becomes rich with history and beauty.

Black: Black is described as “a world of its own” by one contemporary book

artist and ink maker. In typographic applications, it is the color that is held to a universal

standard. The best blacks come from carbon, the charred remains of something that has

been burned. Two printers from the 18th Century, Martin Dominique Fertel and M.

Brenton, both describe a construction called a sac-a-noir that was made for collecting

soot or ash to use as pigment. It is a small structure with only one door that should be

paved or tiled on the inside and lined with paper or goat skin. The antique recipes go on

to specify that pitch resin should be burned in the center of the sac-a-noir. Pitch resin is

the sap of a pine tree that can be collected then made to “boil and melt, in one of several

pots according to quantity. Before it is cool we stick in several slips of paper or brimstone
 11

matches, place the pots in order in the middle of the sac [-a-noir], and last of all, we put

fire to these matches, and shut the little door exactly in going out.”16 An alternative is to

burn the entire stump of a pine tree in this fashion. When the fire has burned out the walls

of the structure can be scraped and the pigment collected. The result of this technique

today is called lampblack but it is uncertain whether or not modern lampblacks are

actually the result of burning pitch resin or whether they are from some other more

common or convenient material like soot like from a furnace or fireplace as Ellis implies

in 1957: “lampblack is produced by incomplete combustion of raw materials such as tung

oil, rosin [rosin is pitch resin after it has been either aged or cooked to rid it of acidic

impurities], creosote oil (obtained from the distillation of coal tar), naphthalene or tar

oils.”17

Other blacks: vine black, impingement black, bone black, manganese black, sepia

or tekeleth (ink of the cuddlefish), manganese oxide

White: Lead white is produced from placing lead in an acidic solution such as

vinegar or urine and waiting for it to corrode. The corroded areas are then scraped off,

ground and suspended in a binder. White lead is toxic and a modern day, nontoxic

alternative is titanium white. Titanium white has a very high opacity and tinting strength;

a dab of the titanium white goes a very long way to help the opacity and to “render [the

pigment] clearer.”18

Other whites: lithopane, calcium carbonate, zinc white

16
Willaim Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured(London: Longman, Rees,
Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1832), 51.
17
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 177.
18
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 58.
 12

Inorganic Red: Vermilion or cinnabar is one of the oldest pigments, used as early

as 400 BC, but is obsolete today, not because of its color qualities, but because like so

many pigments of antiquity, it is highly toxic consisting of mercury sulphide. Red lead or

minium is a red employed in rubrication as early as the thirteenth century and is made by

heating the white flake used to make the lead white. It can be inferred from minium’s

absence when historians or ink makers are addressing printing inks specifically that

vermilion was favored as a printing ink. Both vermilion and red lead are highly toxic.

Iron oxide is an inorganic red pigment that is nontoxic and occurs naturally in ochres.

Iron oxide reds are earthy, warm and come in a variety of names such as indian red and

venetian red. Iron oxides can be other colors but are made red by the presence of hematite

(or sanguine). These iron oxide infused ochres can range from violet-purple to orange

depending on the particle size of the hematite.19

Organic Reds: Cochineal or kermes (aka carmine) is a red from the female grub

of the kermes (implies an Eastern European origin) 20 or cochineal (implies a Central or

South American origin and is historically considered the better pigment) insect21 that is

dried and then crushed and suspended in a binder. Red Madder (aka Madder Lake,

sandis, warantia, granza and garancia) is a dye derived from the root of the madder plant

that is fixed to a mordant to make a pigment and is an earthier tone than the cochineal.

Other reds: cadmium, realgar (arsenic disulphide), archil (AKA orchil and cudbar)

is made from lichen, molybate orange, brazilwood (a lake from the redwood tree and

from which Brazil was named) and siennas which can be red hued.
19
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 15.
20
David Cavalho, Forty Centuries of Ink, 7.
21
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 59.
 13

Inorganic Yellow: Historically yellow has been made with ochre or ochery earth

and the yellows, like the reds, contain iron oxide but instead of hematite particles,

themineral that imparts color is goethite.22 Geothites range in color from cream to gray

white to golden to green to red and is composed of “clay permeated with hydrated

iron(ferric acid).”23 Orpiment, arsenic sulphide, was a yellow prized for its brightness in

the Medieval Era24 but unlike the ochre it is toxic and therefore its use and purchase is

highly regulated. Due to its toxicity, orpiment was replaced by lead tin oxide or masticot

in the fourteenth century; it had the same bright qualities but was less toxic.25

Organic Yellow: Turmeric and saffron are natural yellow dyes that can be put on

a mordant and used. Indian yellow is derived from the urine of cows that have been fed

only mango leaves but is no longer made because this practice was harmful to the

animal’s health.

Other yellows: cadmium yellow, bucktorn berries, gamboche

Inorganic Green: Verdigris or “Green of Greece” is copper acetate was obtained

by scraping of the patina of copper, brass, or bronze26 that has been corroded with an

acetic substance such as urine, wine, or vinegar.27 Verdigris is not used today for toxicity

reasons however malachite (or copper carbonate) is a nontoxic green substitute that is

deposited in the earth but its PH is slightly acidic and, depending on where it was mined,

may not be of archival quality. Because malachite can be corrosive a copper resonate was
22
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 15.
23
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 138.
24
Ian Sidaway, The Color Mixing Bible, 21.
25
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 58.
26
Ian Sidaway, The Color Mixing Bible, 22.
27
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 56.
 14

introduced that was made from verdigris, turpentine, and bitumen and is stable.28 Green

earths have been used since antiquity and are usually named by where they were

harvested ie. Verona Green Earth, Russian Green Earth, Bohemian Green Earth.29 The

minerals that create the color vary from iron to chrome to nickel.

Inorganic Green: Ironically the organic color that occurs so frequently in nature

cannot captured or there is little documentation of the scenario.

Other greens: chrome or milori green, hydrated chromium oxide.30

Brown: There is still no comparable substitute for the umbers which are a brown

variety of ochre. Umbers are brown because of the presence of manganese.31 Burnt

umber and burnt siennas are just versions of umber and sienna that have been heated or

calcined.

Inorganic Blue: Blue was one of the hardest colors to obtain in antiquity which

may explain why it was also the first color to be made synthetically — a double silicate

of copper and calcium.32 Egyptians in the third millennium BC made the first synthetic

color known as Egyptian blue (aka Alexandrian blue or artificial lapis lazuli). Azurite or

Armenian stone is a naturally occurring copper carbonate which creates a soft, grayish

blue. Smalt is a blue derived from grinding glass in which cobalt is trapped33 and adds a

reflective quality to the ink and is highly textured because the glass particles can never be

mulled smooth. Lapis lazuli is a natural stone, the best of which was mined in

28
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 40.
29
Kremer’s Pigments. Kremerpigments.com. Accessed March 29, 2013.
30
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 145.
31
Ibid, 141.
32
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 22.
33
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 60.
 15

Afghanistan and prohibitively expensive historically as well as today but renders a color

that cannot be rivaled.

Organic Blue: A blue-purple dye can be extracted from the shells of the murex, a

type of rock snail, known as Tyrian purple and highly praised by the Romans who dyed

their robes with it as a status symbol34 “It takes nearly 10,000 mollusks to make a gram of

dye.”35 Indigo is one of the earliest lake pigments, is of Indian origin, and was not

introduced into the European market until the 16th Century.

Other blues: iron blues or Prussian blue, ultramarine (both synthetic and natural),

cobalt

34
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 8.
35
Ibid., 37.
 16

Chapter 3

Binders

Many proposals have been and are still being made to replace drying oils
as vehicles for pigments by cheaper or better substitutes. I feel myself
called upon, however, to remark in this connection that no substitute
hitherto suggested is superior to the drying oils, and that at present a good
paint, whether for artistic, printing or general purposes, can only be made
with a drying oil.36

Binders, like all ink ingredients, are referred to in many ways throughout the

centuries; the most popular terms are binder, vehicles, varnish and suspension mediums.

They may be categorized in many ways but there are three types of binders: glues, gums

and mineral. Glues are derived from animal proteins, gums are plant derived,37 and

mineral binders are manufactured synthetics.38 Glues and mineral contribution to the

printing ink history is negligible, they are either too much trouble to manufacture and

toxic, as is the case with the mineral, or too much trouble to obtain, as is the case with the

glues. Binders can be “petroleum derived only when highly modified because they will

not dry naturally by oxidation, rather absorbing into the paper and striking through”39 or

bleeding. The only glue that has been repeatedly mentioned in the research is Menhaden

oil, derived from fish that can be used “if the characteristic odor is not objectionable.”40

[Objectionable odor can be masked with musk as it is in the earliest recipes for India ink

36
Louis Edgar Andres, Oil Colours and Printers’ Inks: A Practical Handbook Treating of Linseed, Boiled
Oil, Paints, Artists’ Colours, Lampblack and Printers’ Inks, Black and Coloured (New York: D. Van
Nostrand, 1903), 3.
37
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 48.
38
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 32.
39
Ibid, 32.
40
Ibid, 32.
 17

from China in 400BC.41] The best binders however, are gums or plant derived and there

are two which are by far the best, both historically and presently: linseed and walnut oil.

Linseed and walnut oils are drying oils that “are characterized by their power to

absorb oxygen from the air, and thus form elastic films or skins.”42 Olive oil would be an

example of nondrying oil that would always remain greasy and unsuitable for ink no

matter how it is treated. Linseed is the oil of flax and is the most popular drying oil for

ink [others include poppy, hemp, rape, soy bean, perilla and tung (china wood) oils]

manufacture in contemporary and historical times.43

In Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises of 1694 under a section entitled ‘Of

Inck,’ gives an early and very detailed description of the production of linseed oil for use

as printing ink.44 Today this product is referred to by the names burnt plate oil (US),

varnish, stand oil, or copper plate oil (UK). The process Moxon describes is dangerous; a

situation that can deteriorate into what the French printer Martin Dominique Fertel

describes as “unmanageable, becoming a body of froth, rising and overflowing the pot in

a complete mass of raging liquid fire, and setting all attempts to extinguish it at

defiance.”45 The appropriate temperature for the linseed oil is approximately 400 degrees

Celsius46 and can be measured today by thermometer but, was gaged at the time of this

example by the reaction between an onion and the hot oil, which may or may not catch on

fire. The linseed oil is cooked to thicken or polymerize it; the longer it is cooked, the

41
David Cavalho, Forty Centuries of Ink, 2.
42
Herbert Jay Wolfe, Printing and Litho Ink, 38.
43
Louis Edgar Andres, Oil Colours and Printers’ Inks, 2.
44
Joseph Moxom, Mechanick Exercises or The Doctrine of Handy-Works(London: Jospeh Moxom, 1694).
45
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 42.
46
“Rembrandt and Burnt Plate Oil,” Northern Light Studio, accessed April 7, 2013.
 18

thicker it becomes. Not much has changed today; Graphic Chemical sells burnt plate oil

in a range of #00 through #8 depending on the cooking time, #00 being the thinnest and

#8 the thickest. However, burnt plate oil may be a misnomer because it is unclear

whether the linseed oil is still burned as Moxon describes. On one hand, it is said that

aside from the danger, burning is no longer part of the process because it can add a tint to

the oil which will then translate into the color. On the other hand it is the word of a

modern ink manufacturer that the oil is still burnt because the reaction of the fire with the

oil releases an acidity which would be a detriment to paper if used for printing. Linseed

oil can also be “cooked” or thickened in the sun as Cennino d’ Andrea Cennini describes

in fourteenth century and is usually called stand oil today.

“Take your linseed oil, and during the summer put it into a bronze or copper pan, or a
basin, and keep it in the sun when August comes. If you keep it there until it is reduced to
a half, this will be most perfect for painting. And know that I have found it in Florence as
good and choice as it could be.”47

William Savage translates two more of the earliest printing ink recipes from

French in his book On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 1832.

Both Martin Dominique Fertel, 1723, and M. Brenton, 1751, describe a very similar

process to Moxon but differ by what they add to the oil during the heating process. There

are three components added: one to absorb the grease, another to hasten the drying time,

and the last to add “brilliancy” or gloss.

When Moxon’s oil has reached the desired viscosity “an ounce of Letharge of

Silver to every four Gallons of Oyl to Clarifie it” is added. Letharge or litharge is a lead

oxide which acts as a drying agent. Its addition to the ink formula was discovered by

47
Cennini, Cennini d’Andrea, The Craftsman’s Handbook: the Italian “Il Libro dell’ Arte,” ed. And trans.
by Daniel V. Thompson Jr.(New York: Yale University Press, 1933), ch. 92.
 19

observing that lead white and lead red pigments dry faster than most when suspended. By

hastening drying time, the entire production chain is hastened. Burnt plate oil can take as

long as three weeks to dry and in modern recipes the drier or siccative is as integral an

ingredient as the binder or pigment because time is money and driers speed things up and

are therefore are valuable. Driers are unnecessary in studio practice if an artist has

enough room and time for drying. There are other metallic oxides that increase the

siccative qualities of the inks as well.48 For example Fertel adds turpentine that has been

reduced by a similarly dangerous process to that of the linseed oil49 as a drier.50 Other

heavy metal driers include cobalt, manganese, and iron salt.51 Resins such as rosin,

dammar, copal, tragacanth, and kauri52 also speed drying time in addition to adding a

gloss to the ink.

Cooking linseed oil by the process above polymerizes the oil so it is no longer

greasy and will lie on top of the paper instead of striking through it or bleeding. Brenton

in 1751 describes the same process for cooking raw oil as Fertel and Moxom but, he uses

“nut oil” (most probably walnut oil, though this is unclear) instead of linseed and to it he

adds “a pound weight of dry crusts of bread and a dozen onions, these things absorb the

grease of the oil.” 53 William Savage, a printer and ink historian in the eighteenth century,

48
Louis Edgar Andres, Oil Colours and Printers’ Inks, 2.
49
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 35.
50
Looking at Fertel’s printing today one can see an offset of his black ink that has developed into an orange
ghost print of one page onto another over the three hundred years since it was printed. What this is a cause
of is unclear because there are many suspect factors. It could be the turpentine drier above, or the linseed
may not have been cooked long enough or the rosin that he added may have been too fresh; or it could have
something to do with the paper.
51
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 100.
52
Ibid., 129.
53
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 51.
 20

comments upon this addition as unnecessary because as long as the oil has been cooked

correctly it will no longer greasy. Time has proved Savage right.

The third addition to the earliest printing ink formulas is an element to create a

gloss as well as add to the stabilization of the oil or the absorption of the grease.

Moxom’s recipe calls for the most popular of these substances, the addition of rosin.

“If the oyl be hot enough, and they intend to put any rosin in, the quantity
is to every Gallon of Oyl half a Pound, or rarely a whole Pound. The
Rosin they beat small with a Mortar, and with an Iron Ladle, or elfe by an
Handful at a time strew it gently into the oyl lest it make scum (bubbles)
the Scum rise too fast; but every ladle-full or Handful they put in so
leasurely after one another, that the first must be wholly dissolv’d before
they put more in.”

Rosin is tree resin, usually of the fir family, that has been aged and hardened or

fresh sap that has been cooked so as to release the impurities, stabilize the volatile oils, as

well as harden.54 Too much rosin will “not allow the ink to spread or be absorbed by the

paper.”55 Interestingly, turpentine is a product of the process of rosin extraction and, as

explained in the black pigment section, this same resin is burned to produce the highest

quality lampblack. Powdered rosin is called colophony and is used in the aquatinting

process.

Isinglass, the swim bladder of a fish, is another substance added to ink for the

same purposes as rosin. Fertel’s recipes “adds a small piece of isinglass, about the size of

a nut, which we have steeped twenty-four hours in a little brandy, and which we must

54
Herbert Jay Wolfe, Printing and Litho Inks, 200.
55
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 25.
 21

well mix with the varnish and the red; this renders the Ink more brilliant, as we have

observed.56

Burnt plate oil is easily obtainable and affordable though if the suspicion reserved

for the ink making industry is turned on the manufacturers of burnt plate oil, then it

leaves the artist in a quandary. Do you try to recreate the cooking process and risk the

“mass of raging liquid fire”? Or do you stop your quest for integrity at a manageable

spot? After all, even is an artist makes their burnt plate oil how do they know the

provenance of the linseed oil? Or by what process it was pressed? Or even how the flax

was grown? Regardless of the place where an artist chooses to relent their control, it is

important that they know as much about the source material as possible because the more

that is known, the surer you can be when manipulating the ingredients for individual

pursuits.

56
William Savage, On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured, 45.
 22

Chapter 4

Extenders and Additives

One only has to look at a book from the incunabula period to know that there is

no ink being made today that is better quality than that being made over five hundred

years ago. Take the first book ever printed as an example. The ink quality of

Guttenberg’s Forty Two Line Bible truly justifies the name of the black letter font; it even

retains a gloss and there is not strike through or offsetting after five hundred years. The

same can be said for the ink in work of Manutius and Jenson in Venice at the time of the

incunabula.

One reason for the degradation of ink may be that the recipes for more

contemporary inks add extenders to the list of the main ingredients for inks. The addition

of extenders is not a new practice: calcium carbonate has been used to bulk up ink for

centuries, but what was once a trick to fool a customer is now common practice and

freely admitted to by the ink manufacturing companies.

“Extenders are solid substances that are employed in printing inks to reduce the
price of the finished ink. The extending agent has no coloring or hiding power, but if
employed in small proportions together with the pigment will serve to increase the area
covered per unit weight of pigment.”57
To say that the extender does not affect color is ignoring the obvious. It may have

no color, but it puts space in between the particles of the pigment and thus dulling them.

Both calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate imbue ink with a matte, chalky quality

that may be desired by an artist, but it should be a choice. On a more basic logic: the

more extender there is in an ink, the less pigment and the less pigment there is the less

57
Carelton Ellis, Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology, 153.
 23

color. By this same logic the addition of driers, which is universally the case with

manufactured inks, has an effect on color. If an artist has enough room to dry their work

there is no need to add driers and there is absolutely no need to add extenders unless the

effect that they create is desired.

Other extenders include: barytes (barium sulphate), whiting (Paris white or

calcium carbonate), china clay (kaolin or hydrated aluminum silicate with quartz, mica,

and feldspar), and magnesium carbonate.58

58
Ibid, 153.
 24

Chapter 5

Incorporation

“The physical characteristics of an ink are also influenced considerably by

the relative particle size and degree of dispersion of the pigments used.”59
“The ink must possess suitable physical characteristics such as viscosity,
length, flow and tack to adapt to the particular types of printing press and
[paper] stock on which it will be used.”60

An artist that knows what goes into ink is one that knows how to manipulate it.

All printmaking techniques require different formulations of ink. Earth pigments are

chunky and may scratch a copper or zinc plate and lake pigments will dissolve into the

water used during the lithographic process and migrate to where it should not be. All the

author/chemists writing at the first half of last century about the manufacture of ink

(Ellis, Wolfe, Apps, and Andres) all break down the printing methods into three groups:

typographic (letterpress), intaglio, and planographic (lithography and offset).

Typographic ink are those used for letterpress and the ink formulation can be

refined depending on the type of press being used, e.g. platen, rotary, etc. For the most

part, typographic ink should be “long in nature – drawn in long threads between the

fingers.”61 Moxom, Fertel and Brenton all mention testing the ink between the fingers for

readiness. Typographic inks must also have tack to ensure even delivery to the type. Any

pigment is suitable for typographic ink as long as the particle size is not so large as to

clog the letters, filling up the apertures and bowls of the type.

59
Herbert Jay Wolfe, Printing and Litho Inks, 29.
60
Ibid., 276.
61
Ibid., 29.
 25

Intaglio inks are described as short (between the fingers). They must stay in the

etched mark, but not be so polymerized that when wiped, the ink from the etched areas is

carried with the surface ink that is being removed. Furthermore, the plate can withstand

no grease less it not be wiped clean before printing. Because the paper must be dampened

before printing, the pigment chosen for intaglio ink cannot be water-soluble, ruling out

the organics.

Planographic processes such as lithography only apply one thin layer of ink to the

paper as opposed to intaglio that can hold a thicker layer of ink in its depressions. For this

reason, the pigment chosen for a planographic process should be highly opaque. They are

more viscous than typographic inks, but break into shorter strands between the fingers.62

Making ink is not only a meeting of the formulation with a need; it is also a

matter of aesthetic. Throughout history ink makers knew this and used the characteristics

of individual inks to their full advantage. A layer of smalt blue (made from pulverized

glass) can be layered on an azurite blue to create depth with an added gloss and a green

earth can lend a truly sculptural component to a landscape. This aesthetic has been

forgotten in contemporary times for the sake of ease and homogeneity.

Inks can be mixed for desired effect. They can be textured, opaque, transparent,

matte, and shiny and this is left up to the artist. Ink making is a practice filled with

surprises and frustrations and what you learn is that color is more than color. And in

many ways, modern times deny color its true complexity. Color has character way

beyond red, blue, or yellow. Color has personality and this personality affects the process

62
Ibid., 29.
 26

of creating art. Thomas Primeau offers an example of this in a fifteenth century woodcut

in his essay The Materials and Technology of renaissance and Baroque Hand-Colored

Prints. There are two different types of red used on a particular print of the crucifixion

and they are indistinguishable from one another. The first red, a red madder, is used to

color the robes of the virgin and angel. The second red, a lead red is used only to

represent the blood of Christ. This “suggests that beyond the symbolic associations that

colors possess, the coloring materials themselves had significance.”63 The alchemists who

were integral in the advancement of color in the middle ages and after were so secretive

about their processes that they only referred to them in color code; they “wrote of their

mysterious activities in mysterious terms as the white, black, yellow, and red

operations.’”

This base theory of combining ingredient A with ingredient B to equal ink gets

complicated by proportion because there is no constancy or universal formula. Pigments

are idiosyncratic and each acts differently when it is combined with the binder. This

becomes evident the moment they hit one another; one pigment may change color

immediately upon contact with the binder, while another will remain the same color as

when dry. Once incorporated, other characteristics of the pigments become apparent.

Characteristics such as transparency, opacity, texture, viscosity, gloss not only differ

from pigment to pigment but, to different variations of the same pigment, i.e., how and

where it was obtained and how it was ground. Getting the proportions correct is a matter

of being observant and “the discourse on colour is not largely an academic discipline;

63
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 66.
 27

rather it is generated in the course of making things.”64 Ink making is not a thoughtless,

mechanical process; an artist must be vigilant and adjust the recipe appropriately.

If you want more opacity you can add more pigment or add a dab of an opaque

white like titanium. White in handmade inks is analogous to salt in cooking, for the most

part a little bit brings out the natural qualities of the main pigment. Adding pigment also

produces tack because there is a smaller proportion of the burnt plate oil to make the ink

stringy. If you want more transparency, you can add more burnt plate oil to disperse the

pigment particles. If you need the ink to be thinner, add a lower number plate oil, and a

higher number if the ink needs to be thicker. If you want a gloss, you can either choose a

pigment that has it naturally or add rosin. Rosin must be melted before it can be

incorporated into the ink.

Mulling is how the pigment and grinder become ink. Mullers are made of glass

with a handle on one end and flat surface on the other. The mulling surface should be

made of either glass or marble (historically the case) and the idea behind the two surfaces

is that they are completely flat so that when pressed between these surfaces, the pigment

and ink incorporate more fully with the least amount of effort and there is nowhere for

the tiny pigment particles to get trapped or clogged. The muller should draw the ink into

thin strips over the surface until the desired consistency is reached. Usually you will be

able to see the particles break down as they begin to incorporate. The amount of time the

mulling takes depends both on the pigment, binder and the desires of the ink maker. The

less mulling, the more texture there will be in the ink and vice versa.

64
David Bachelor, Chromophobia(London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2000), 15.
 28

Ink manufacturers use triple roll mills to mix their inks. Instead of two glass

surfaces the ink and binder are being mixed between steel rollers. There is less control of

over individual batches with a mill and the ink is always mixed until there is no texture

left. Again, the manufacturers are choosing this for the artist.
 29

Conclusion

What was lost with the disappearance of natural madders, indigos, and
cochineals? The variability of the natural mixtures, their subtle nuances,
and a certain quality of unreproducible individuality: the touch of the
dyer’s hand.65
Countless new organic and mineral compounds continue to be made, as
useful for coloring traditional supports as for new materials such as
plastics. And yet, the very abundance of colors in the modern world seems
to dilute our relationship with them. We are losing our intimate connection
with the materiality of color, the attributes of color that excite all the
senses, not just sight. Just as saffron yellow seems to have a certain scent
and clay white to be soft and powdery to the touch, all colors can be
perceived according to their nature. Colors are not assessed only according
to degrees of hue, brightness, or level of saturation, but are hot or cold, dry
or wet, silky or rough, even aggressive or soothing.66
Contemporarily the phrase pure color connotes vibrancy. But in the context of

making ink, the phrase means something radically different. When it is said that a color is

pure, it is not referencing a bright quality of color but rather, how few and pure the

ingredients are that were used to make it. Malachite (copper oxide) for example, is a

vibrant light green, like the patina on a roof or penny, but occurs this way naturally. This

green differs radically from a synthetic pantone or phthalo green. Malachite will also

“lose its color if it is too finely ground”67 so pure color in this case means the green

having a texture.

The unpredictable characteristics of some pigments may call to question their

archival qualities but many of the pigments and binders in this paper have been in use for

centuries. The real question should be: what is the archival qualities of synthetic inks?

Both Van Gogh and Matisse have had their canvases fade to unintended hues because the

65
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 103.
66
Ibid., 125.
67
Thomas Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Reniassance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in
Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color, ed. Susan Dackerman, 52.
 30

synthetic aniline pigments that were new at the time had not been properly tested for light

fastness and resulted in “countless brushstrokes of countless other painters from the neo-

Impressionist and Fauve schools have been similarly damaged.”68 Synthetic pigments

have not been around for centuries and there is no way to tell what state they will be in a

hundred year’s down the line. The recipes provided in this paper have not changed over

hundreds, if not thousands, of years. One only has to look at the historical record to prove

this constancy.

The works of William Blake have been reproduced countless times but at the in

the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress there are facsimiles that have been

made directly from the authentic copies in the collection so the difference in the ink

quality can be studied in a very straightforward way. William Blake worked at the turn of

the eighteenth century before the industrial revolution and before the manufacturing of

ink. Conversely, the facsimiles were made in the latter half of the mid twentieth century

when the use of manufactured ink had completely taken over the artist’s palette. The

difference between them in ink quality is startling. The first impression upon seeing the

two books side-by-side is that the colors of the facsimile seem garish. The pigments of

the original are not muted, but they cannot be described as bright. Natural pigments can

certainly be bright, for example both vermillion and orpiment are extremely bright, but

the brightness does not have the across the board range as it does in the synthetic analine

pigments of the facsimile.

With control over the pigment particles Blake attains a sculptural effect in his

image. When he lays colors on top of one another they do not seep into one another like

68
Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau, Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments, 112.
 31

they do in the facsimile, rather, they build on top of one another and this is used to

particularly good effect in the rocks on the last page of his Book of Ahania. This

sculptural effect also creates an edge condition between the fields of color, they are

delineated sharply even if not by a straight line. This is in contrast to the facsimile where

the colors bleed into one another and cause edges to blur creating a fuzzy appearance

between the planes. There is a mass, a weight, to Blake’s color that can at once ground

his image with their heaviness or can set them into flight when contrasted with a

transparent selection.

Blake manipulates his ink by methods that are all but lost today. Artists never

consider adding more pigment to the canned ink, this option has been squeezed out of our

studio practice by manufacturers. The absence of choice has resulted in generations of

artists being trained on a substance that is a mystery to them. If ink is made by hand, the

characteristic of the pigments and binders, so integral to the process, begin to embed

themselves in the work in more than one way. Firstly, you will actually be able to see the

particles and the color; your ink will have substance. Secondly, there is a new layer or

meaning that forms with the control over color that imbues a confidence. A new mystery

forms but at least that mystery resides in the nature of the pigments, the nature of color,

and not in a manufacturer’s whims.

 32

Bibliography

Andres, Louis Edgar. Oil Colours and Printers’ Inks: A Practical Handbook
Treating of Linseed, Boiled Oil, Paints, Artists’ Colours, Lampblack and Printers’ Inks,
Black and Coloured. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1903.

Apps, E. A. Printing Ink Technology. New York: Chemical Publishing Company,

1959.

Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2000.

Batchelor, David. Colour. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Blake, William. Book of Ahania. Lambeth, UK: William Blake, 1795.

Blake, William, Book of Ahania. London: The Trianon Press, 1973.

Blake, William. Book of Urizen. Lambeth, UK: William Blake, 1794.

Blake, William. Book of Urizen. London: The Trianon Press, 1954.

Carvalho, David. Forty Centuries of Ink. New York: The Banks Law Publishing
Company, 1904.

Cennini, Cennini d’Andrea. The Craftsman’s Handbook: The Italian “Il Libro
dell’ Arte.” Ed. And trans. by Daniel V. Thompson Jr. New York: Dover Publications,
Inc. 1933, by Yale University Press.

Delamare, Francois and Guineau, Bernard. Colors: the Story of Dyes and
Pigments. New York: Harry Abrams, Inc. 2000.

Dackerman, Susan. Painted Prints: the Revelation of Color in Northern

Renaissance and Baroque Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
 33

Ellis, Carelton. Printing Inks: their Chemistry and Technology. New York:
Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1940.

Gaskill, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford, UK: Claredon Press,

1972.

Last, Jay T. The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography.

Santa Ana, CA: Hillcrest Press, 2005.

Moxom, Joseph. Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works. London:

Joseph Moxom, 1694.

Phillips, Michael. William Blake: The Creation of the Songs From Manuscripts to
Illuminated Printing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Savage, William. On the Preparation of Printing Ink Both Black and Coloured.
London: William Savage, 1832.

Sidaway, Ian. Color Mixing Bible. New York: Watson-Guphill Publications,

2002.

Suetonius. Vitae XII Caesarum (Venice: Nicolas Jenson, 1471)

Weber, Marshall et al., La Historia de la Marea. Brooklyn, NY: Artichoke Yink
Press, 2005.

Wolfe, Herbert Jay. Printing and Litho Inks. New York: MacNair-Dorland
Company, 1957.

Interviews

Allerslev, Kurt; bookmaker and chemist

Allix, Susan; bookmaker

Heaver, Stephen; Letterpress printer, Hill Press; Baltimore, MD

Morenus, Linda; Library of Congress, Senior Paper Conservator