Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen<\/strong>: Brazilwood, buckthorn berries, logwood, madder, and weld. Between the months of February and April, my major research activity was boiling these plants. Why? I experimented with a number of recipes for making ink and lake pigments in order to explore the materiality of colors in the early modern period on a small scale. One of them, taken from a mid-seventeenth-century recipe collection, reads as follows:<\/p>\n \u201cHow to make Red Inke. Take [Brazill] and seeth it in Vinegar and small beer, in an earthen pot, and put a little Allum therein, untill you taste it to be strong on your tongue, and when it is boyled, straine the [Brazill] through a clout, cleane from the water, and let the water stand and cool for your use.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n Generally speaking, the first steps in making ink and lake pigment are similar. Immerse a plant in some amount of liquid, usually water and\/or vinegar. Heat the mixture for some time to extract colorant from the plant. Add alum in different quantities as needed. Ink requires only a small bit of alum to add some thickness to its consistency. Lake pigment, on the other hand, requires a larger amount because the dyed alum is the main substance that constitutes the pigment.2<\/sup> The red ink recipe describes many of such generic steps and features.<\/p>\n Senses in Text<\/strong><\/p>\n This recipe is particularly interesting because it specifically mentions the sense of taste. Among all the senses, taste was one that I ignored when creating pieces during my art school years. Working primarily with modern art supplies of all kinds, we were instructed NOT to put anything in our mouths because most materials, while not necessarily highly poisonous, are hazardous to the human body when consumed. The red ink recipe challenged my own understanding of the making process in a confusing way. What does it actually mean to \u201ctaste it to be strong on your tongue\u201d? How strong is \u201cstrong\u201d? What kind of taste would it be? Sour? Bitter? The listed ingredients (Fig. 1) are either edible or relatively safe to ingest in minute quantities. Nonetheless, remaining skeptical and not daring enough to risk my life in the worst-case scenario, I forewent the step of tasting the mixture for both attempts of this recipe.<\/p>\n Fig. 1: Ingredients for the first attempt of the experiment (left to right): alum, beer, vinegar, Brazilwood shaving.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Senses During Making<\/strong><\/p>\n Missing the sense of taste did not consequently compromise the experiments. Taste was not the only sense involved in this process. Even though other senses are not mentioned in the text, it became clear that they all played their parts to produce the red ink, and by extension ink and lake pigment in general. Sight, unsurprisingly, was a crucial sense that participated in most of the process. The eyes saw the changes of the color and the consistency of the solution (Fig. 2). They checked the marks on the thermometer and looked out for overflow while boiling. Hearing was attentive to the bubbling sound of the solution. The ears informed me when to start to keep an eye on the decreasing amount of liquid remaining in the beaker (Fig. 3). Touch was alert to the heat to prevent me from scalding my fingers on the hot beaker. Smell did not really have a critical role in this case. However, the aroma of the brazilwood, vinegar, and beer mixture was so overwhelmingly present that it became the most memorable aspect of this making experience.<\/p>\n Fig. 2: The color of the mixture of the first attempt before (left) and after (right) heating.<\/p>\n![\"ingredients\"](\"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/210\/2020\/06\/Fig.-1-3-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"color\"](\"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/210\/2020\/06\/Fig.-2-3-1024x385.jpg\")
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