Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's symphonies, Linnaeus' floral sketches, Galileo's hand paintings of the sun and moon, Snowri's legends, America's Declaration of Independence. What do all these things have in common?
They are all written in iron bile ink, which is a purple-black ink, which is different from traditional Chinese lamp gray ink. The biggest difference between the two is that the iron bile ink is insoluble in water, and the lamp ash ink is soluble in water to form a suspension.
This ink requires the use of a miniature insect called a gall bee.
Gall bees are parasites on grass and trees, most commonly found in oak trees. Wasps secrete a chemical that induces plant growth, which causes plants to form a house and food pantry around one or more larvae.
There are many types of galls. One of the ones that is often used to make ink is the oak gall, also known as the "oak apple". In fact, it did look like a small apple—rounded in shape with a crimson hue—but unfortunately it happened to get stuck on an oak leaf.
Inside the "oak apple", gall bee larvae sit back and nibble on plant tissue, and they are protected from any enemy.
Well, it can only be said that it is part of the enemy, because some parasites have their own parasites: uninvited guests who come to forage for food and refuse to leave- such as the guest gall bees who move directly into the galls of other gall bees because they do not have their own galls.
Worse than that are those who pierce the outer wall of galls with long ovipositors and lay eggs inside the larvae of gall bees that inhabit them. As a result, the insects hatched from the gall may be far from those who started the "gall".
The outer wall of oak gall contains a tannic acid, so it is very strong. This acid occurs naturally in many plants, and it's the kind of substance that's associated with both your leather jacket and fine wines. Tannic acid is crucial in the leather tanning process, and at the same time, a master sommelier can also identify the grape variety and storage method based on the tannic acid in the wine.
The earliest inks were produced in China thousands of years ago, using carbon from lamp smokes. Mixing the lamp smoke with water and gum arabic, a natural gum extracted from acacia trees, will allow the lamp smoke to be suspended in a liquid.
If you are unfortunate enough to sprinkle a cup of tea on a work written in ash ink, your mind will be lost forever. Carbon ink is water-soluble and easy to wash off – when people lack paper and bamboo, they are willing to use this method.
Later, people learned to make ink by mixing an iron salt and gum arabic with oak gall gall.
The great advantage of this new type of ink is that it is insoluble: it penetrates into the parchment or straw paper used for writing. In addition, it does not clump and is easy to manufacture. From the 12th century to the 19th century, iron bile ink was the most commonly used type of ink in Western countries.
So, thanks to this little oak gall bee, if it weren't for them, the Western world wouldn't be sure there would have been so many well-preserved, well-written documents from the great artists and scientists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
If there were only ash ink, many of the old ideas, tunes, and texts would have been washed away by the water—either because the preservation conditions were too rudimentary or because someone wanted to reuse the parchment.