Pokeberry Ink

For some reason I don't understand, I recently got onto an ink-making kick. I've been doing some reading on the different types of homemade inks and exactly how they work. I've run into a few really presumptuous craftsmen trying to make lofty liquids called ink. My opinion is that one can make all kinds of colored fluids using all different things, but an artist should know what they are making and call it what it is without making wild claims. A craft is not a badge you pin on your shirt, it enriches you for its intrinsic value of having made it. You don't need to claim it's the Emperor's new clothes. Okay, that's enough of that soapbox.

The two most common homemade inks out there are oak gall ink and poke berry ink. Different authors on the internet will tell you that the Declaration of Independence was written with each one of these. No one seems to agree which it is. I don't want to declare myself independent, I just think it would be fun to have homemade ink made from local plants - a kind of "ink of the land." My mother told me she used to use poke berries and a twig to write messages to her sister when they were back on the farm. Poke berries are abundant around me right now and oak galls are not, so I went with that color source. The problem is that there is a great deal written on oak gall ink and less written on poke berry ink. I believed that the information for the former would be helpful for the latter. Though it was useful information and I know much more about ink, what I found was that I made my craft more complex than it had to be. Art and science teach us that sometimes.

Wearing gloves, because all parts of the poke berry plant are poisonous and stain everything they touch, I collected about 7-8 ounces of poke berries. I won't go into the identification of the plant, or the other uses of the plant (poke salad), because that is a different entry. I crushed the berries inside a plastic bag to be sure they were all mashed up. I could have just stopped there, but I got caught up in the chemistry of ink, so I will take you down the twisted and unnecessary trail.

I had read that there is a chemical reaction in ink that darkens it in which iron reacts with the acids in the mixture.While I was crushing the berries, I thought to myself, "I bet the poke berry skins have lots of pigment in them -- tannins, like in the skins of grapes -- that I can extract to help make my ink dark!" That meant I didn't want to filter away the skins before the rest of the process. So I put the poke berry mash into a stainless steel pot with one cup of distilled water and started it simmering. I used distilled water to eliminate the possibility of chlorine added to municipal supply water. It also allowed me to prevent any other ions that might interfere with the chemical process that I would start in the next moment. The stainless steel pot should have been relatively inert, but I could have been wrong about that. I added one tablespoon of whole cloves to provide a natural preservative and I also hoped they would help deepen then final color of the ink. The cloves would be one of two herbal antifungal ingredients I would add to prevent any mold from growing in my inkwell.

I then added one teaspoon of iron shavings. These were intended to react with the acids in the ink and darken the color (more on that in a moment). I used the shavings sold as "lodestone food" from the local pagan/gem store. I've heard others use steel wool, which isn't truly steel, a rusty nail, or even pills of an iron supplement from the vitamin store. Now here's where the chemistry of ink comes in. The purpose of the iron was to react with the acid to create a ferrous chemical that is darker than just the acid itself. Here was also where my error, and the error of other ink makers, reared its ugly head.

Oak gall ink is made by reacting iron (II) sulfate with gallic acid. This causes a darkening of the final ink to increase the contrast on the page. This reaction cannot be done with tannic acid, as I originally thought. Even more in error was my thought that tannins and tannic acid are the same thing. Tannins, which are found in grape skins, acorns, and all through the plant kingdom as a natural astringent for plants, are related to but chemically different from tannic acid and gallic acid. It is impossible to make oak gall ink or anything chemically similar using anything other than gallic acid, which is usually found in the galls of oak trees. Now, back to the poke berries.

I simmered the mixture until it was reduced to one third of its original volume. I took the mixture off the heat and allowed it to cool until warm.

Still wearing gloves, I poured the mixture into a square of double-weight muslin draped in a glass bowl.

I gathered the edges together and began to squeeze and twist the bundle until my ink was pushed out.

When I could get no more ink from between my cramped hands, I threw the bundle away and poured my new ink into an old mustard jar that had been given a grander purpose.

As my second and final antifungal, I added a teaspoon of extract of rosemary, which I had made in the past as a medicinal. I used the finished ink to write the label on the outside of the inkwell.

Some inky thoughts:

I didn't add any gum arabic or any other thickening agent, as is used in some other ink recipes I've found. After testing my final product, I'm considering using a little to see if it improves my ink's ability to resist bleeding on low quality papers. I also think I will add my rosemary extract when the product is still hot so as to drive off any alcohol from the final product.

When I learned that there was no gallic acid in the berries, I learned that the iron shavings were useless in this recipe. The fact that there is no gallic acid also means that this ink may not destroy paper and quills as aggressively as will oak gall ink. The simmering of berry skins may have been pointless too, because I don't really know how much color they imparted to my product. I do know that the final ink had a reddish color while the precooked berries left behind a stain that was more purple, and in my opinion, prettier. For the next experiment, I'm more interested in using just crushed berries with an antifungal but no heat. So the next time I make this stuff, my recipe may be just crushed berries, rosemary extract, and whole cloves. I will keep you posted on my homemade ink progress.