The favourite ink of medieval scribes is slowly eating Bach's original scores
For centuries iron gall ink, brewed from iron salts and tannin from tree galls, was considered the finest ink available. It is also acidic. About a quarter of the Johann Sebastian Bach manuscripts held by the German State Library are now in advanced decay, the paper turning brittle and the notes fading to brown.
The recipe took shape roughly 1,600 years ago and became prominent by the early 12th century. Mixed with a thickener, it goes onto the page bluish-black and dulls to brown over time. The damage comes from chemistry inside the paper: acid breaks down cellulose, iron speeds its oxidation, and swings in humidity accelerate the formation of further acids. Conservators disagree sharply about what to do. No treatment reverses the harm, water-based washes can make ink bleed or colours shift, and some experts prefer to leave affected pages alone in stable storage.
Older inks were gentler. Nearly every early civilisation seems to have started with lampblack, the soot that fire leaves behind. Egyptians were writing on papyrus with red and black inks by the 26th century BC, using iron and ochre pigments with lead as a drier. In China, soot bound with animal glue formed inksticks by around 256 BC, and India ink, despite its name, was a Chinese invention, well established by the Cao Wei dynasty of 220 to 265; the name came from materials traded from India. Carbon ink never fades in sunlight and does not harm paper, though damp can smudge or wash it away.
Scribes kept inventing. A 12th-century recipe had hawthorn bark soaked for eight days, boiled with wine, dried in bags in the sun, then cooked again with wine and iron salt. In 953, the caliph of Egypt, Ma'ad al-Mu'izz, wanted a pen that kept his fingers and robes clean and received one with its own ink reservoir, possibly the first fountain pen. Gutenberg's press needed something new again, because handwriting inks blurred on type; printers settled on an oily mix of soot, turpentine and walnut oil.
Modern ink science goes further still. Nanotube-based carbon inks can be run through inkjet printers to print patterns that conduct electricity.
Source: Ink
