I’m making a new batch of ink for the Midwinter A&S entry. It is an oak gall ink recipe by Giovambattista Palatino (1515-1575, Italy) from Scribes and Sources by A.S. Osley, pg. 92-93.
The batch was started on Sunday. I cracked 1 1/2 ounces of oak galls and added them to 16 ounces of distilled water (substitute for rain water). Recipe calls for allowing them to “soak in the sun for a day or two.” Due to the inclement weather (massive, traffic stopping, school closing, low temperatures in the teens & twenties, highs below freezing ice storm), the ink was put in a glass canning jar in the window of the house that receives the most sun. The jar was left uncovered.
[The recipe called for steeping the galls “in half a flask of wine or, better still, of rainwater”. Image searches of period manuscripts depicted flasks about the size of a modern circular canteen. Search on modern canteens gave sizes of 32 – 85 ounces, with typical size of 32-45 ounces. As I do not need that much ink, I used the 32 ounce guestimate and cut the recipe in 1/2.]
Tuesday night, 1 ounce of copperas was added and the mixture was stirred with a fig stick.