Written by
Ines Marlowe
Filed under
Craft
From
Issue 12
Iron gall ink has been made the same way for a thousand years: oak galls, iron, water, gum and time. Mostly time. The recipe I followed asked for two weeks. I gave it four days, and the result looked like weak tea.
The first three batches
The second batch was too acidic and ate a small hole in the page. The third grew a magnificent mould. By the fourth I had learned the only lesson the recipe was really trying to teach.
You cannot rush a chemical reaction. You can only get out of its way.
What you need
Crushed oak galls, soaked for a week.
Iron sulphate and a little gum arabic.
A jar, a dark cupboard and some patience.
The ink I use now goes on pale grey and darkens to black over an hour, as if the words are deciding whether to stay. Most of them do.
About the author
Ines Marlowe
Ines founded Verenis in 2019 after a decade editing books in Lisbon and London. She writes about attention, handwriting and the economics of slowness.
