India_ink

This article is about the ink. For the play by Tom Stoppard, see Indian Ink (play).

Indian ink (or India ink in American English), also called Chinese ink, is a simple black ink once widely used for writing and printing, and now more commonly used for drawing, especially when inking comics and comic strips, as well as in diamond cutting.^{[citation needed]} Indian ink usually is not suitable for fountain pens, as it will readily clog the pen. An exception to this is Pelikan Fount India, which does not contain shellac, the substance which can cause clogging.

History

Early treatises on the arts refer to black carbon ink that was prepared by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. Originally designed for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved hieroglyphs, the basis of the ink was a black carbon pigment in an aqueous adhesive or binding medium; for example, a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and musk.http://barnyard.syr.edu/~vefatica/writing.txt The ink invented according to legend by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 BCE), became common by the year 1200 BCE.

Sometime before the 12th century, Eraclius, in his De Coloribus et Artibus Romanorum, presented a set of directions for making several types of carbon inks, including one similar to the Indian ink of China, made from the soot of burning resin or wood. Different types of wood will create different-colored inks. In an English volume on handwriting of 1581, Theophilus presented a recipe for a carbon ink:

To make Inke in haste.

In hast, for a shift when ye have a great neede,

Take woll, or wollen to stand you in steede,

Which burnt in the fyre, the powder beate small:

With vinegar, or water make Inke withall.

As the recipe shows, no binder material is necessary: the carbon molecules are in colloidal suspension and form a waterproof layer after drying; often waterproof shellac is added though.

Indian ink replaced the previously widespread Iron gall ink in the opening years of the 20th century.

Uses other than writing

Hanetsuki (羽根突き, 羽子突き) is a Japanese traditional game, similar to badminton, played by girls at the New Year with a rectangular wooden paddle called a hagoita, and a brightly-colored shuttlecock. The shuttlecock must be kept in the air as long as possible. Girls who fail to hit the shuttlecock get marked on the face with Indian ink.

Indian ink can also be used for home-made tattoos (sometimes called "prison tattoos"), by inking the preferred design onto the skin and then stabbing over the ink with a sharp sewing pin.

In pathology laboratories, Indian ink is applied to surgically removed tissue specimens to help maintain orientation and indicate tumor resection margins. To avoid having an inky mess, the painted tissue is sprayed with acetic acid, which acts as a mordant, "fixing" the ink so it doesn\'t track everywhere. This ink is used because it survives tissue processing, during which time samples of tissue are bathed in alcohol and xylene before being embedded in paraffin wax, as part of making glass microscope slides. When viewed under the microscope, the ink at the tissue edge informs the pathologist of the surgical resection margin or other point of interest. Distance from the tumor to the edge of the resected specimen is an important prognostic indicator that surgeons and oncologists use to decide follow-up treatment options.

See also

• Pen and ink
• Ink and wash painting (Sumi-e)

References

• A brief history of writing instruments.. About Inventors Texts. Retrieved on March, 2006.

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