Silver Acorn Cap Ink

  

Acorn Caps from an Oak Tree

Foraging in my own neighborhood, I was able to get silver acorn caps this week.  They were so many, falling around us like rain last week!  The lady who owns that house and giant oak, sweep them off the sidewalk daily, and bag them for anyone who wants them.  I told her I'd be attempting Silver Acorn Cap Ink.

I used this recipe from The Make Ink: A Forager's Guide to Making Natural Ink book.

I made adjustments to the proportions in the recipe according to the amount of plant material I had to work with.  I had about 5 cups of acorns, so I added 7 cups of water to the simmering pot, along with a canning jar lid that was beginning to rust, and a smallish ball of steel wool for the iron mordant.

This simmering post also smelled quite nice!  I'm not sure how to describe it -- Earthy, but not heavy.  Nutty.

It quickly turned the water to a lovely reddish tea (Do people drink oak caps for tea?)

After 45 minutes, it was a dark brown, and I could not see through to the bottom of the pot.  That looks quite promising for ink!

 

 

Failed Mordant

From what I know of iron mordants, it should react with the tannin and turn the ink gray or black.  I'm not seeing that here, which makes me think that I didn't have enough available iron in the pot.  The steel wool may have had a coating on it that prevents it from rusting.  And the canning lid was beginning to rust, but it may not have had enough.

I'll try again with some finer steel wool.  After I bottled the ink, I added a pinch of a finer steel wool.  After a week, that dissolved, and turned the ink gray -- as expected.  I had smaller bottle that I left as a control.  That jar stayed brown. The power of iron mordants!

 

The spent acorn caps.

Practical notes on using this ink:  The author says that it get darker as it oxidizes, meaning that if you apply it to paper in the evening, it will be darker by the morning.  It's quite a magical effect if you have the patience to wait it out!

 

Silver Oak Cap Ink (no iron mordant)

This would be the control batch.  It's a perfectly serviceable brown ink. 

 

Here it is with iron mordant -- It's getting a little darker. This one may have dried before it oxidized, but it's definitely darker than the batch above.

Although I filtered this ink, it still looks like there are lots of particulates floating around.

 

Here's a texture on an old library catalog card.  This is more the color I expected. 

 

Lots of interesting nuances with this one!

 

I think this was a combination of Silver Oak Cap and Sumac ink.  The color shifted again to have a slight green tint to it. 

 

Another Sumac and Silver Oak Cap Ink Texture. 

 Ode to Fall!