iron-gall ink

Ingredients

green vitriol, gall, iron sulfate, copper, saffron

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Iron-gall ink was prepared with green vitriol and gall (p. 116). Some recipes contained both iron sulfate and soot (p. 116). The presence of copper lines in ESR spectra suggests recipes containing some amount of copper, likely from blue vitriol (chalcanthite) (p. 117). Saffron was probably added to the recipe as an inhibitor of cellulose oxidation (p. 117).

Evidence

"all the artworks showed iron-gall ink Raman spectra, none of them presented carbon black ink characteristics. Nevertheless, it is not excluded that these inks could correspond to carbon black/iron-gall combined recipes."

Remarks

The study notes that iron-gall ink was attractive due to simplicity of preparation, quality of writing, and non-removability (p. 116). The paper suggests that the low occurrence of corrosion in these specific Moroccan manuscripts might be due to the protective inclusion of saffron (p. 117).