The Royal physician Theodore de Mayerne (1573-1655)  is best known for one manuscript, the so-called “Mayerne Manuscript” (British Library MS Sloane 2052) that details the techniques of old master painters, such as those of his friend Peter Paul Rubens. Mayerne, however, in scores of manuscripts, collected techniques of all kinds.

Here are two nearly identical recipes he collected for red inks. The recipes are in two different hands, one written in red ink itself, and each on small, previously folded pieces of paper, suggesting how recipes once circulated. Today they are found in a file of Mayerne papers in the Royal Society archives (Classified Papers 3i/28) in London, discussed in Vera Keller, “Scarlet Letters: Sir Theodore de Mayerne and the early Stuart Color World in the Royal Society,” in Archival Afterlives, Keller, Roos, and Yale, eds (Brill, 2018).

Encre rouge de Mr. Taylor [Red ink of Mr. Taylor]

Take a quart of red wine viniger boyle in it 3 ounces of red brasill Woode beinge well brused. put to it an ounce of beaten allum. Let these boyle to a pint, put to it an ounce of Gumm arabeck or more as you shall require, straine it for your use—

 

[written in a red ink] [recto]

Rosette Mr. Taylor

1630

[verso]

Take a quarte of wyne venegar and boyle in it an ounce of Allum and three ounces of brassill wood

let this boyle till about halfe be consumed putting to it half an ounce of gum