organic inks, such a thing?

[Deirdre]

Oh my! Solanum dulcamara. Bittersweet Nightshade. I wonder who tasted it and lived long enough to give it the name.

Which reminds me of my emergency gastrointestinal paralytic: belladonna + phenobarbitol, enteric coated. I've had refills of it throughout the last twelve years, but it leaves me feeling so poisoned, I think I've only used three pills.

[Ondina]

I know that to some extent they use petrol based oils for inks, and that carbon has usually been the pigment in india inks, but are there organic inks made from soy bean oil, or vegetable oil? Are there any organic inks, as in made from a renewable resource?

 

Someone else will have to dig up the reference but I remember there being a Japanese squid ink for FPs and I can't be certain but Herbin uses some pretty organic materials for their inks.

 

Kurt

 

 

I was reading through the posts and just thinking that in the atlantic shores of Europe, many used squid, sepia -cuttlefish- and calamari ink. Is pretty persistant, black like no other, and dense. It has to be dissolve in order to be used.

 

Edited to add that is highly toxic stuff, but it looses its toxicity when boiled at high temperatures, and used in haut cuisine delicacies such as "chipirones en su tinta".

Edited March 21, 2008 by Ondina

[Possum Hill]

I think pokeweed berries have been used to make ink. The color is probably a purplish red or reddish purple. I doubt it was done commercially, though. While the young shoots of pokeweed, also called pokesalad, can be eaten like asparagus, I think the berries are poisonous.

[Possum Hill]

Or this pretty thing that grows abundantly in my back yard:

 

Quite deadly but as natural and organic as can be. Munch a leaf and kiss yourself goodbye. :roflmho:

 

Oh my! Solanum dulcamara. Bittersweet Nightshade. I wonder who tasted it and lived long enough to give it the name.

 

Paddler

Maybe it was named for its resemblance to bittersweet, rather than for its taste. Of course, I have no idea how bittersweet got its name.

[WhosYerBob]

Are there any organic inks, as in made from a renewable resource?

Of course there are! But most cannot be used in fountain pens for various reasons - high acidity levels, particulates that will clog the nib, really fugitive colors, etc.

 

From historical sources we know that the original form of iron gall ink was made from oak galls and/or other trees. Other plant and animal sources can be used as well. The real problem is whether the resulting ink can be used with any expectation of archival qualities and whether it will ultimately damage the nib of the pen it's being paired with or the paper it's being drawn upon.

 

An example:

 

I have a lovely deep brown ink my wife made for me from the black walnut husks of a tree we have in our back yard. She ripped the nasty, black husks from the outside of the black walnut shells, put them in a pot, added distilled water and boiled them for many hours. This resulted in a liquid that looks brownish-black, stains likes crazy, smells like vanilla and has a thick sludge in the bottom of it. But when used with dip nibs, it produces a beautiful, rich, dark brown line that is both permanent and stable - just don't expose it for long periods to direct sunlight or it fades pretty badly. For examples of black walnut ink use, look to Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Durer, Rubens, and many many others. Here's a recent example from the web: http://tinyurl.com/2xphy2

 

A Google search for black walnut ink will reveal a whole raft of info out there.

[Zed]

Hello,

 

To put the discussion a bit on the plain level again: some time ago I asked myself the same question about which ink is the most environment friendly one.

 

After some very unscientific research I ended up with the following two makers: J. Herbin (already mentioned) and Penman. The latter is much less known and probably less FP friendly than J. Herbin. That is why I use them almost exclusively for my calligraphy creations that I do with dip pens. There are a few reviews of Penman inks here on FPN (under their earlier name of Robertson's Penman inks) and some more information about their line up on the following link http://www.scribblers.co.uk/acatalog/Penman_Colour_Inks.html .

 

Hope this helps, Zed

[Omegaham]

I think there's a big difference between "most environmentally friendly" and "most natural." As previous posters have said, natural dyes are often toxic and quite acidic, and I doubt that many natural dyes will last for very long.

 

Second, synthetic dyes are non-toxic, (which means that if a bottle breaks and leaks all over the ground nothing is going to die) non-acidic, (which means that your pens aren't going to get destroyed) and much cheaper. Bottom line - if natural dyes were better or even more environmentally friendly than synthetic dyes, companies would be making them.

 

Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's environmentally friendly. After all, beavers are natural, and they destroy ecosystems with ease. So are mudslides, tsunamis, and poison ivy.

 

Edit: As for "renewable resource" inks, I wouldn't worry about that. Blue is made from copper oxide, generally - since we don't use copper for telephone wires anymore, we're not going to run out of it anytime soon. Just use blue ink and make sure it doesn't get in the water table, and you're already being more green than 99% of the other pen buyers out there.

Edited March 21, 2008 by Omegaham

[Deirdre]

Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's environmentally friendly. After all, beavers are natural, and they destroy ecosystems with ease. So are mudslides, tsunamis, and poison ivy.

Good point. Let's not forget that the most potent neurotoxins are natural, e.g. botox. It gives me the willies that people use it for cosmetic purposes. For rehab of stroke victims, that I understand. But not for cosmetic procedures.

 

Beavers do create new ecosystems, too, though. Moose habitat, for example. Moose like swamps. Beavers create swamps.

[captnemo]

Beavers do create new ecosystems, too, though. Moose habitat, for example. Moose like swamps. Beavers create swamps.

 

That's true. In fact beaver is the most important and easiest to see indicator of the health of an average North American ecosystem. An ecosystem that supports plenty of beaver is a healthy ecosystem. If there are no beaver, something is way wrong and many other species are also suffering.

[captnemo]

Or this pretty thing that grows abundantly in my back yard:

 

Quite deadly but as natural and organic as can be. Munch a leaf and kiss yourself goodbye. :roflmho:

 

Oh my! Solanum dulcamara. Bittersweet Nightshade. I wonder who tasted it and lived long enough to give it the name.

 

Paddler

Maybe it was named for its resemblance to bittersweet, rather than for its taste. Of course, I have no idea how bittersweet got its name.

 

It's my understanding that the fruit is bittersweet. The berries are eaten by certain birds that can withstand the atropine. Also, the fruit is less toxic than the leaves. Ingesting one leaf is enough to kill an adult human. Much like hot peppers that also appeal to birds, the plant has developed chemicals that encourage certain animals to eat certain parts and discourage others.

[Sholom]

As an aside, about the only place I still see synthetic dyes (of which I have probably over 100 in my lab) referred to as "aniline dyes" is in discussions of inks. Aniline itself is indeed nasty, but rather few dyes are still made using it. The name "aniline dye" probably refers back to the synthesis of Mauveine, the first completely synthetic dye, by William Perkin in 1856. He oxidized aniline that fortunately had some necessary impurities in it and got a purple dye out of the resultant sludge. This became the basis of the synthetic dye industry. Like many of the early synthetic dyes (and some still in use!), Mauveine is not very light-fast, but most of the naturally occurring dyes aren't either.

 

Keep in mind that, unlike paints and most printing inks, there is usually no binder in fountain pen inks, so there is no analogy to e.g. soy-based printing inks. In answering the original question, I think we need to distinguish between at least the following:

1. dyes that occur in nature, can be readily obtained from their natural sources, and are suitable for use in water-based inks such as fountain pen inks. The selection is very limited if you value light stability.

2. dyes that occur in nature but are made synthetically. The classic example is Indigo, which is not soluble in water. If it was, it would wash out of jeans even faster than it does. Off the top of my head I can't think of any such dyes that are suitable for fountain pen inks.

3. dyes that are not found in nature. Most modern water-soluble (and other ) dyes fall into this category. These dyes are popular because they can be brighter, have hues not found in nature, or are more stable (or combinations of these properties).

 

Independent of the categories is the question of how environmentally friendly are the processes by which they are extracted or made. While much good work is being done in developing environmentally more friendly chemical processes (look up "Green Chemistry" on the Web), to my knowledge this work has had only a modest impact on the dye industry. Dyes are commodity chemicals, which means the profit margins on all but the newest and highest quality ones are very low. The result is that a lot of dye manufacturing has moved to Asia where environmentally conscious manufacturers are a minority, and even a tiny increase in production cost to achieve a cleaner manufacturing process is considered unacceptable until governmentally mandated.

 

This is getting rather long-winded, but is just the tip of the iceberg concerning the availability, selection, choice, and costs of dyes.