This collection of seventeenth-century recipes for inks points to the intersections between inks and  the fashion for flower gardens in early seventeenth-England, as well as to the use of color in food dyes. The author frequently compares his colors to flowers and fruit (carnation, currants, and marigolds). One recipe for a purple color calls for the “turnesol the cookes use,” the juice of a berry used in food dyes. Tournesol or turnsole is also called Dyer’s Croton (Chrozophora tinctoria) and was known to medieval illuminators simple as “leaf” [Folium]. In his Theatrum Botanicum,  apothecary, gardener and first royal “Botanist,” John Parkinson, called it “Heliotropium tricoccum. The Colouring or dyeing Turnesole.” As he did in many other cases, such as the syrup of violets, Parkinson described how turnesol could be used for a  curious display of color changes. He doescribes how the juice of the berries “being rubbed upon paper or cloth, as the first appeareth, of a freh and lively greene colour, but presently changeth into a kind of blewish purple upon the cloth or paper, and the same cloth afterwards wet in water and wrung forth, will colour the water into a claret wine colour; and these are those ragges of bloth, which are usually called Turnesole, in the Druggists and Grocers shoppes, and with all other people, and serveth to colour jellies, or other things as every one please” [John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum, the Theater of Plantes (London: Cotes, 1640), 439]. Robert Boyle, who used color changes to help develop the theory of acids and alkalines, cited this passage from Parkinson in a 1664 experimental work on color [see William Eamon, “New Light on Robert Boyle and the Discovery of Colour Indicators,” Ambix 27:3 (1980), 204-209]. However, before a gentleman philosopher like Boyle turned his attention to the hidden chemical properties that made such color changes occur, we can see some theorizing in color recipes themselves (see, for example, “Roache Red” below).

 

Vera Keller

 

[February 2019] This is my partial draft transcription, and it will be improved over time.

British Library Sloane 3292

 

Inkes

 

… To make Printing Inke

 

Grynde Lampe black or as some cale it Spanish Ceruse with Gum water for liquid Ink

But if you will have it dry to carry about one either in Lether purse, bladder or box Then grynd it well with a strong gumwater & make it up into a Balle or what forme you will: & being dry you may carry it without when you use it.

Shave it into a shell or spoone & mingled with vineger or bran you may writie  or draw with it. This or your Liquid Inke serveth to print with and when you Printe have in redyness a peece of lead finely flatted lyke a plate & a seasoned troukle bed wheele coverd with cloth or cotton or stuff to grinde the Ink on the leaden plate  & dip your printe on the wheele so covered in inke: so slap the printe upon your cloth or paper which you are doing. Inking it neatly downe with your fist & nowe & then brush your printe to make it printed neater. But if you print upon Cloth or Wollen stuff Boile your printing inke  to. . . . . if this will make it fit to stick some.

Buy your wood you cut your prints for. . .at the gunmakers at Tower Hill or minories Pear tree xiid per foote.

. . .

 

Inks by Thomas Pew

 

Violet

Boyle Logwood steeped or beaten in fair [?] water with Allom. If you will have with light color take the less Allom or of deepe, take the more Allom.

 

Redd

Boyle Brassel so steeped in Chamber lye with Allom as the violet was used for lighter

 

Greene

White wine vinegar wherein steep Verdigree & put into a peece of clear gum  [marginal note: if it be well grounde it must needs be better or grynde it with gum water ]

. . . .

Rosset

Grind fine Rosset with weake Gum arabick water. if you put too much gum, it will make it too much bonne [?]. If it cannot rise to its own proper color put in a little litmose you shall have a deep purple and if you put fine serris it maketh a light crimson.

Sinap Lacke

Grinde a fine Sinap lack with a stiff water of Gum lac & grinde it long for it is a durable cullor and will have much grynding & if you put your paste of fine  serris  and the 8th part of Sinap grind them with a weake water of Gum arrabick it makes a good and a plesaunt Carnatian cullor & a pleasant [sic].

 

Sanguis Draconis

Grind fine Sanguis with vineger of red wine it maketh a good sanguine to lay uppon a Carnation and to shadow out the hands feet poisages of mens bodies

 

White Surris

Grinde a fine Surris with a stiff water of gum lack and it will shinke lyke Silver

 

White Lead

Grinde fine white lead with arrabick water as fine as you can: this is more white than the other but not so lyke silver as the other:

 

Purple Culler

Steep Turnesole such as the cookes use in stronge vineger boild in a dish or a chafing dish coles and wring out the Juce

 

Sable Culler

Hould a linke under a brass bason and stryke of the black with a fether and grind with a weak arrabick water it maketh a good sables.

 

An orient or vellurt black Inke

Take and break but not too smalle one ounce of Gaules: 2 ounses of Copperis and halfe an ounce of gum arrabick. put them in a quarte of Raine water and a pint of lyes of wyne and vineger. Let it stand the longer the better to make it shine put a spoonfull of honny.

 

Greene bisse

. . .

 

Verdet

. . .

 

Spanish yellow

. . .

 

Green Verdigrece

Take fine Verdigrece and grind it with the Juce of Rue. And put to it a little weake gum water. But and you put in too much rue it makes a deep green and if you put a steep water to it will not rise to his own proper cullore for it is abynded itselfe but it makes the fayrest greene and most durable it is.

 

Sap Green

Take Sap green and lay it cleane water & put to it a little quantity of Allam; and let it stand a night and you shall have a fayre green water & then put a little gum that is cleere thereto and this water is the cheif water of greene that can be to dyaper upon all greens.

 

Roache Red

Take fine Brassell and scrape it thin. Take glew and let it stand 3 or 4 hours or more and it makes a puer Red. Then straine the glew from the wood for if it stand much over 4 hours unstrained lyke as the glew doth search the wood so will the wood search the Cullor from the glew againe.

 

Vermillion

Take fine vermillion and grinde it fine with glew as fine as you can. So in the grinding put to it a quantity of Sapfron and a drop of clarified honny and if their rise any bubbles in the grinding: put to it a little earewaxe and grind with it and it will draw away the bubbles and make a fayre cullor currante.

 

Red Lead

You must grind drye red lead with Saffron and honny as you did the Vermillion.

It maketh a light red like a marygould.

 

[This collection goes on to give recipes for drawing colors, making chalks of various colors, drawing pencils and “To Inke out a Picture Print Letter Knot or other Devises”]