Vera Keller
John Beale (1608-1683), a clergyman and soon to be a founding member of the Royal Society, one of the first scientific societies in Europe, was worried. He was worried about many things, but what concerns us was his worry was the lack of thought that went into the color of books. Given how fickle human nature was, he found it a wonder that people have been “constantly fixed upon blacks & Whites for inke & paper or parchments, or vellum, in all our Writings & Print-Impressions.”* As he pointed out, black ink on white paper was not only tiresome on the eyes, but the toxic materials used in many inks threatened the health of the reader.
If we consider, he warned, how “immediate passage there is” from the written page the brain, we must be concerned that these “perpetuall, incessant, & forcible transpirations should bee salubrious, & assisting to the vital spirits, to the principall, & Capitall member, the Head.” Otherwise, toxic inks, claimed Beale, “by a lingring corrosion doe infect the braine, create hecticke & malignant fevors & other kinds of consumptions: & sometimes they storme away our lives with a more hasty dispatch.” If one really inquired into the ingredients used in inks, there would be more to be afriad of “their crude Copperasses , & unprepared Vitriols, than of a pestilence in the neighbourhood, or of thunder & lightning about our eares.” Instead, through a “judicious choice of medicall and balsamicall ingredients” in ink, healthy vapors would continually waft up the nostrils of the reader and writer. If made from alchohol, ink in this way could even offer a “a more refined, & spirituall way of drinking Wine all the time” while reading. He proposed a delightful experimental program of creating new colors from affordable, healthy materials, from flowers to vegetables. Describing a beautiful color that could be made from violets, for example, he declared, “What inke can bee more wholsome, more sweete, or more beautifull!”
Beale perhaps overstated the danger of copperas, that, is the ferrous sulfate used in prepare iron-gall ink, the most common premodern black ink. He was not wrong, however, about the dangerous chemicals used in many other colors, such as the mercury sulfide of cinnabar and vermillion, red and white lead, and arsenic-containing orpiment. His concerns about the effects of such chemicals on health went largely unheeded.
Beale’s worries represent a road not taken in the history of chemistry. Color research continued to be a major area of interest among Beale’s contemporaries in the Royal Society and among other early experimentalists. The investigation of color spurred many chemical developments. These ranged from the theories of acids and alkalis explored through color changes by Beale’s contemporary Robert Boyle to new theories of light itself proposed by Isaac Newton on to the development of organic chemistry in the nineteenth century and the development of multinational pharmaceutical companies in the twentieth, such as the infamous I.G. Farben (in English, “Dye Industry Syndicate, Inc.), whose subsidiaries, AGFA, Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst live on today. Yet, throughout this long history of experimentation with color, few chemists made social concerns, such as the healthiness and cost of ink ingredients, the driving force of their experimental agendas, as did Beale.
Today, both the green chemistry movement and a return to natural pigments and dyes does do so. The Farm to Book initiative, a collaboration with the Beach Conservation Lab, and the Urban Farm, is revisiting an alternative approach in the history of science, one which made concerns about effects upon people and the planet a central part of experimental practice. On this site, you can find historical sources containing recipes and experiments on non-toxic natural dyes, as well as our own experiments and lessons learned.
*All citations from Beale are taken from Chapters 2-4 of his draft treatise, The Purple of the Ancients, found in the Hartlib Papers Online, 51/127A-144B. Greengrass, M., Leslie, M. and Hannon, M. (2013). The Hartlib Papers. Published by HRI Online Publications, Sheffield [ available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/hartlib ].