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Hi Miguel,
What is Indian ink, used on this painting of The Golden Age?. This one is so fascinating to me. Dali must have know about the Golden Age What is he holding in his right hand? What does it mean?
India ink (or Indian ink in British English) is a simple black ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. Indian ink is also used in medical research and is considered as a suitable material for demonstration of the blood vessels under the microscope.
Basic India ink is composed of a variety of fine soot known as lampblack, combined with water to form a liquid. A binding agent such as gelatin or, more commonly, shellac may be added to make the ink more durable once dried. India ink is occasionally sold in solid form (most commonly, a stick), which must be moistened before use.
The process of making India ink was known in China as far back as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, during Neolithic China.[1] India ink was first invented in China,[2][3] although the source of materials to make the carbon pigment in India ink was later often traded from India, thus the term India ink was coined.[2][3] The traditional Chinese method of making the ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black, lampblack, and bone black pigment with a pestle and mortar before pouring it into a ceramic dish where it could dry.[2] In order to use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it reliquified.[2] The manufacture of India ink was well-established by the Cao Wei Dynasty (220–265 AD).[4] Historically the ink used in China were in the form of ink sticks made of lampblack and animal glue.
The Chinese had used India ink derived from pine soot prior to the 11th century AD, when the polymath official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the mid Song Dynasty became troubled by deforestation (due to the demands of charcoal for the iron industry) and desired making ink from a source other than pine soot. He believed that petroleum (which the Chinese called 'rock oil') was produced inexhaustibly within the earth and so decided to make an ink from the soot of burning petroleum, which the later pharmacologist Li Shizhen (1518–1593) wrote was as lustrous as lacquer and was superior to pine soot ink.[5][6][7][8]
India ink has been in use in India since at least the 4th century BC, where it was called masi, an admixture of several substances.[9] Indian documents written in Kharosthi with this ink have been unearthed in as far as Xinjiang, China.[10] The practice of writing with ink and a sharp-pointed needle was common practice since antiquity in South India.[11] Several ancient Buddhist and Jain scripts in India were also compiled in ink.[12] In India, the carbon black from which India ink is formulated was obtained indigenously by burning bones, tar, pitch and other substances.[13]