The story of black and brown inks
This online presentation will cover the history, appearance, chemical composition, manufacture, and identification of black and brown inks. Conservation treatments and associated dilemmas will also be addressed. Special focus will be on logwood inks and iron gall inks.
Black and brown inks, i.e. bistre, soot ink, iron gall ink, logwood ink and sepia, have played an important role in the history of mankind as a means of expressing information, either in writing or drawing. Logwood inks were used by 19th and 20th artists such as Vincent van Gogh. In 1847, Runge introduced the black chrome-logwood ink as an alternative to iron-gall ink, because the latter attacked steel writing nibs. Due to the profitable trade in importing logwood from Haiti, chrome-logwood ink became the cheapest and most widely spread black writing ink in France. This could explain why Vincent van Gogh, during his French period, used it for writing and drawing instead of iron gall ink.
Banner image: Image from the 1900 catalogue of the important French ink manufacturer ‘Encre N. Antoine et Fils’ ©
Guest-lecturer, Amsterdam University
Han Neevel obtained a Masters in Analytical Chemistry at Utrecht University and conducted a PhD research into the photochemistry of azo dyes at Delft University of Technology. He started working in conservation science in 1991 at the Royal Library, and since 1993, he has started working for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and its predecessors. He is currently a guest-lecturer at the Amsterdam University, where he teaches the chemistry of ink corrosion, the chemistry of colour formation and dye degradation and the chemistry of chromogenic colour photography. He also modifies and develops specific analytical techniques and tools: e.g. Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy, Fibre Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy, as well as spot tests for the conservator.