carbon black or iron gall ink

Ingredients

iron (II) sulfate, gallic acid, oak galls, gum Arabic, wine, glue

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

The review notes that iron gall ink generally consists of iron (II) sulfate and gallic acid extracted from oak tree galls (p. 314). Additives often include gum Arabic, wine, or glue to adjust viscosity and stability (p. 314). In the specific study of Arabic documents (11th-17th C), black inks were identified as either carbon-based or iron gall-based using FTIR spectroscopy (p. 322).

Evidence

"Arabic documents from the eleventh to seventeenth century were also studied using a number of techniques including FTIR (Arias et al. 2008). Of interest in this work was the detection of colorants or pigments in inks. For example, while black inks were predominantly carbon black or iron gall ink..."

Remarks

This entry details a study by Arias et al. (2008) on a collection of Arabic manuscripts in Granada, Spain. The work used Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to identify the chemical signatures of the inks, distinguishing between the molecular structures of carbon-based pigments and the complexed organometallic structures of iron gall inks (p. 322).