Iron gall ink, part 2

I finally braved the goo! I'm sparing you the gory pictures, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I strained the ground gall into a bowl (see picture below, and yes that's exactly what it looks like -- thankfully it doesn't smell like that). Then I mixed the ground galls with another cup of water, swished it around and strained it again. Finally, I took out handfuls of the mush and squeezed them hard in my hand to get the last of the liquid out. After it was all said and done I had about 5 or 6 cups of gall liquid.

I picked up some iron sulfate from Seattle Pottery, which is the yellow powder in the white bowl below. The matter of obtaining iron sulfate hasn't been an exact science. If you do a Google image search for "iron sulfate" you'll see a lot of pictures of green powder, some pictures of a white powder, and a few pictures of a yellow powder.  Which is the one I need?  I'm going with the yellow stuff from the pottery supply place.  We'll see how it turns out.  So far, so good --

My apologies for the fuzzy picture below. Had I known the liquid would change so quickly and dramatically after adding the iron sulfate I would have tried harder to take some good before pictures. But below is the best one I have. Prior to adding the iron sulfate, the gall liquid was a reddish-brown color and very watery and transparent --

After adding the iron sulfate it changed quickly right before my eyes, becoming a very dark black color and thickening somewhat. At first it was brown-black but as it sat it became more purple/blue-black. It even stained my fingers black as I worked with it.  Definitely potent stuff, at least in terms of staining. It's a little hard to tell in this photo, but this is what it looked like after adding the iron sulfate --

Now to set it aside to sit for a few more days before the final step...

back to the studio

Gearing up for the next step of the iron gall ink. I picked up some iron sulfate and now have to psych myself up to strain out that moldy mess of gall goo.

In the meantime it's back to the studio. Spent a good day cleaning and organizing it. Now it's on to new projects. The first is pictured below. Any ideas what this is? It'll become apparent soon enough. Spent the past two days building this thing. It was truly a headache, what with my lack of proper tools and all the time spent dealing with clueless people who work at hardware stores and yet know nothing about tools or construction. grrrr... But I finally got this thing built. I even managed to bend that 5/8" thick threaded rod with the help of some length of pipe.

"Delight is a secret. And the secret is this: to grow quiet and listen; to stop thinking, stop moving, almost to stop breathing; to create an inner stillness in which, like mice in a deserted house, capacities and awarenesses too wayward and too fugitive for everyday use may delicately emerge. Oh, welcome them home! For these are the long-lost children of the human mind. Give them close and loving attention, for they are weakened by centuries of neglect. In return they will open your eyes to a new world within the known world, they will take your hand, as children do, and bring you to where life is always nascent, day is always dawning. Suddenly and miraculously, as you walk home in the dark, you are aware of the insubstantial shimmering essence that lies within appearances; the air is filled with expectancy, alive with meaning; the stranger, gliding by in the lamp-lit street, carries silently past you in the night the whole mystery of his life...

Delight springs from this awareness of the translucent quality in all things, whereby beauty as well as ugliness, joy as well as pain, men as well as women, life as well as death -- the grinding clash of opposites between whose iron teeth all systems of philosophy are crushed at last to pulp -- are seen as symbols; in the true meaning of a symbol, whose Janus-like face contains at once that which exists in time and space, and that which transcends it."

--Alan McGlashan, "The Savage and Beautiful Country", 1967

Aren't you glad you're not married to me? (iron gall ink, continued)

(or three or four...)

Iron gall ink, part 1.5

The gall/water mixture is still fermenting. The weather in Seattle has cooled so I might leave it to sit for awhile longer to make sure it's good and ripe. I found that the ratio of one part ground gall to four parts water was not wet enough to allow for the fermentation process. Once the galls soaked up all the water it made more of a thick paste and was just sitting and drying out rather than fermenting. So I cut the paste in half and added 30 ounces of water to the second half, making the ratio more like 7.5 ounces gall to 90 ounces water (about one part ground gall to 12 parts water, if my meager math skills aren't failing me). Put the bowl back out to sit some more and it's looking much more promising now. Stay tuned...

Iron Gall Ink, part 1

Sometimes I wonder if I a medieval monk in a former life? I have such a fascination with "how things used to be done." Or maybe it's just the deep satisfaction of making things from scratch as opposed to picking up a shiny plastic bottle of modern chemistry at the art store. I simply prefer to work with materials made from my own hands, whose ingredients are known and natural and completely pronounce-able, and which can be executed with humble means. And so it is with the latest project in the studio: iron gall ink.

I was down in southern Oregon recently, spending a lot of time in the dry woods there. Scrub oak abounds and every now and then you see these golf ball and baseball-sized pale tan bulbs on them. Some sort of fruit? Nature's christmas ornaments? It turns out they're oak galls -- dry, hard, gourd-like growths on a very small percentage of oak trees.  These growths are the result of the tree trying to protect itself from a parasite, the gall fly, which is a generic term for any insect that causes a plant to produce galls (oak aren't the only trees to make these). Being the "medieval art techniques" geek that I am, I remembered that these galls were a key ingredient in the way ink used to be made so I brought home a big bag of them.

What makes these important for ink making is their high level of gallotannic acid, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is the thing that keeps the ink from fading. Probably also the reason why red wine stains so badly, due to the tannic acids (this coming from a Google-armchair-chemist so don't quote me!). Anyway, most of the galls are a pale tan color, but color variations include beautiful blushes of pink and peach, to dark brown and even nearly black --

When I first brought them home they were so pretty and pristine. I could have filled a big bowl with them, making a nice centerpiece. But I kept them in the bag for a day or two as I gathered info and ingredients.  When I went to open the bag I was surprised to find that the galls were full of holes! Not only that but when I opened the bag a couple of moths flew out. Apparently their larvae had been living inside the galls and had hatched and chewed their way out. At the bottom of the bag were some telltale larva casings --

Pretty voracious eaters, too. White most of the holes were very small (maybe 1/8" in diameter at most), some were quite large --

But the moths had their chance to escape.  I let the galls sit out a few more days to make sure the moths were gone.  Soon it was time to proceed with the ink making. The monks of old would have used a mortar and pestle, but if they'd had these oh-so-useful electric spice grinders I'm sure they would have sung praises to the heavens for the miracle of technology, probably drawing little Cuisinart cartoons in the margins of their manuscripts with happy little monk-dudes dancing nearby --

Big bowl of ground oak galls -

Since iron gall ink was pretty much the only ink used for centuries, recipes are numerous. But typical of really old recipes like that, every single one is different, often drastically so. I've decided to go with one of the fermented recipes as I read they make the darkest ink. Since I've got a considerable amount of ground gall I'm going to use a recipe that uses a high proportion of gall-to-water. Since I don't have a bucket of rainwater sitting around, I'm using distilled water. Four parts water to one part ground gall, by weight (below I'm using 60 oz. water to 15 oz. gall)

Now to set it in a sunny corner for a few days or a week to ripen it. I just hope the stink doesn't get out of control.

Art to the Nth degree

Check out this artist, Keith LoBue's, blog starting from the June 3, 2010 entry titled "Poetical Modesty, In Progress -- Stage 1". The link is here. I think he posted 5 stages in all, with extensive commentary and photos all detailing his latest work. What's fascinating is to witness his creative vision unfolding with each entry, not to mention his impressive master craftsmanship.

And if you take art to the Nth degree and raise it to the level of the esoteric, you get Claudio Corallo's art. That's right.. chocolate. But this is chocolate like you've never had before. This is the pure cacao plant reverence. Seriously. This is beyond chocolate.