Introduction to Archival Materials AN INTRODUCTION TO PRINTING INKS An early printer’s workshop. In the background are the compositors at their cases. In the foreground are two pressmen, one taking off the sheet, whilst the other inks the lines of type with felt covered leather pads or ink-balls. AM 9. Crown Copyright © 1999 310399 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION....................................................................11 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING..............................................1 1 AND PRINTING INKS COLOURED PRINTING INKS....................................................3 8 MODERN INKS..........................................................................3 9 INTRODUCTION The main function of a printing ink is to effect the transfer of colour from a printing plate to the surface to be printed e.g. paper. The ink should then set or dry so that the colour is permanently attached to the substrate. The old wall ink (atramentum tectorium) described by Pliny1 is the forerunner of the modern printing ink, and is essentially a rapidly drying black paint. The first pigments used were carbon based, and they were ground into a gum and water carrier in the same way as early writing inks. However, due to the resultant poor quality of the printed image, this recipe needed to be adapted. Where printing inks came to differ from writing inks is that they contained a varnish, instead of an aqueous solvent, and these varnishes were based on vegetable oils, initially walnut, then predominantly linseed oil (which had been boiled, thinned and purified). The varnish is very important, as the main property of a printing ink is the rate at which it dries2. Black printing inks made of carbon and boiled linseed oil are the most stable and permanent; they are not affected by light rays and bleaching agents, are insoluble in water and are difficult to remove from the document without leaving evidence of alteration. Today, printing inks are usually manufactured with synthetic resins, and the nature and proportions of the ingredients vary according to the printing process (e.g. typographic copperplate), and the material to be printed. The proportions are even checked, and sometimes modified, during printing. It took many years, however, to discover the first suitable printing ink. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING AND PRINTING INKS The story of printing ink really begins with the invention of the printing process. It seems certain that a primitive mode of printing was known to the Chinese as early as 50 BC, and their writing ink was adapted for this purpose. Lampblack3 was mixed in a mortar with a gum solution to make a paste, and was then placed in moulds to dry and stored in sticks. When required, the printer rubbed up a stick in a concave stone with some water. The Chinese also experimented with inks made from plant substances mixed with coloured earth and soot at least as early as 500 AD, but not much advance was made until the reign of Ming-Tsung in AD 927 when a number of volumes were printed from stone blocks for the Imperial College at Peking. The characters were cut Pliny the Elder 23 - 79 AD, a Roman scientist and historian The drying is caused, primarily, by a chemical reaction which occurs in the oil on exposure to air, turning it into a hard glossy mass (analogous to linoleum) which encloses the pigment 3 Lampblack is nearly pure (99%), amorphous carbon and is so finely divided that it does not require grinding. It is not a true black but is slightly bluish in colour. 1 2 1 into the surface of the stone so that when printed they would appear as white on a black background. Shortly afterwards engraved blocks of wood, with the letters in relief,4 were used for another edition of the same works. This art of printing from wood carving is known as xylography.5 To make a print, the wood block was inked with a brush,6 a sheet of paper spread on it, and its back rubbed with another brush. Only one side of the paper would be printed. By the end of the second century AD, the Chinese had apparently discovered, empirically, a means of printing texts, and certainly they had at their disposal the three elements necessary for printing: firstly, paper, the techniques for the manufacture of which they had known for several decades; secondly, surfaces bearing texts carved in relief;7 and thirdly, ink, whose basic formula they had known for twenty-five centuries. By the sixth century carved wooden blocks began to be used more commonly. About AD 1041-48 a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng is believed to have experimented with moveable type8 made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking.9 Later, more durable type was made from wood and experiments were conducted using metal (which would have been the best for practical reasons). However, despite the appearance that Pi Sheng had found an overall solution to the many problems of typography (the manufacture, assembling, and recovery of indefinitely reusable type) these experiments do not appear to have succeeded, probably for two reasons. First, the Chinese alphabet, with its vast number of characters10 would make the creation of a type foundry a formidable undertaking, and second the water-based ink, which was ideal for wood cuts, did not spread evenly over the metal letters but stayed in globules thus resulting in an unsatisfactory print.11 Blocks with designs in relief became identified as the letterpress process following the invention of other printing processes. 5 To make a wood block the text was first written in ink on a sheet of fine paper. The written side of the sheet was then applied to the smooth surface of a block of wood, coated with a rice paste that retained the ink of the text. Thirdly an engraver cut away the un-inked areas so that the text stood out in relief and in reverse. 6 Writing at this time was mostly carried out with brushes, though there was some evidence of quills, and these brushes were automatically used to apply the ink (a very similar ink to the writing ink) to the wooden blocks. 7 Interesting, and unusual, examples of these include classics texts of Buddhist thought inscribed on marble pillars, and religious seals which were evidently used to transfer pictures and texts of prayers to paper. 8 Moveable type is letters formed separately, which, after being grouped into words, and sentences, and paragraphs, could be redistributed and used again. 9 The texts were composed by placing the type side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax and paper ash. Gently heating this plate and then letting the plate cool solidified the type. Once the impression had been made, the type could be detached by reheating the plate. 10 About 80,000 symbols or ideograms. 11 It is interesting to note that the use of moveable type existed in Korea by the first half of the fifteenth century. Typography was extensively developed under the stimulus of King Htai Tjong who, in 1403, ordered the first set of 100,000 pieces of type to be made of cast bronze. Nine other fonts followed from then to 1516; two of them, in 1420 and 1434, were made before Europe in its turn discovered typography. Without any direct evidence this suggests the simultaneous development of an ink which would spread evenly over the types and transfer on to the paper with ease. 4 2 Printing did not reach Europe until the Middle Ages, by which time the rapidly growing demand for written material was outpacing the ability of copyists.12 One major problem was that, unlike in China, paper was an unknown commodity. Up to this time manuscripts had been written on parchment, prepared by hand from sheepskin or goatskin, and each skin was therefore very time consuming and expensive to produce. However, in the twelfth century, a new parchment was introduced into Italy from Arab countries, namely paper.13 Over the following two hundred years both the quality and availability of paper increased to such an extent that by the late fourteenth century it was rapidly replacing parchment for most purposes, the exception being legal documents. Paper was easily adapted for printing and throughout the fourteenth century xylography grew rapidly.14 Each page, be it text or illustration, was cut in relief from an individual wooden block and the blocks were inked, still with the water-soluble inks which had been used for writing the original manuscripts. These blocks were then individually applied to sheets of paper. Unfortunately the prints produced from this, very cumbersome, method were brown and faded. It was in the fifteenth century that serious experiments began in Europe which culminated in the work of Johann Gutenberg, a goldsmith, who pioneered a process of casting precise metallic type15 from prepared moulds. Once the moulds had been prepared any number of characters could be cast without loss of quality, hence the invention of movable metal type.16 Gutenbergs outstanding achievement was the printing of the 42-line Bible17 Johann Gutenburg By the fifteenth century there was an increasing practical need for reading and writing, especially for people involved in trade. An improved school and education system as well as an expanding middle class created a large and expansive market for books. 13 Paper followed the caravan routes of Central Asia to the markets of Samarkand, whence it was distributed as a commodity across the entire Arab world. The transmission of the technique of paper-making appears to have followed the same route; Chinese taken prisoner at the battle of Talas, near Samarkand, in 751 AD gave the secret to the Arabs. Paper mills proliferated from the end of the eighth century to the thirteenth century, from Baghdad and then on into Spain, then under Arab domination. Paper penetrated Europe as a commodity from the twelfth century onwards - in Italy and Germany in thirteenth century, and France, Switzerland and Austria in fourteenth century. The first paper mill was not established in England until 1498, nearly 20 years after Caxton set up his press in Westminster (circa 1477). 14 Interestingly, unlike the paper-making technique, the knowledge of the typographic process does not seem to have succeeded in reaching Europe from China. 15 Cast from a blend of lead, antimony and zinc. 16 It is impossible to say with absolute certainty when or by whom the idea of moveable type was first conceived. Gutenberg is credited with the invention but according to some sources Laurens Janszoon Coster (1370-1440), a Dutch printer, invented moveable type and after his death an apprentice ran off to Mainz with the blocks, took Gutenberg into his confidence, and began a printing business with him. 17 The 42-line, or Mazarin Bible, was apparently begun about 1450-2 and completed about 1456. Its two volumes consist of 643 folio 2-column leaves. It is thought that thirty-five copies were printed on parchment and 165 on paper; of this total only 48 are known. 12 3 between 1452 and 1456; the reproduction being noteworthy for the quality of the type, the layout of the page and the intense blackness of the print.18 The conception of a new oil-based printing ink by Gutenberg was just as important as his development of moveable metal type and the press. The blackness and sharpness of the printed image was striking. As had others previously, Gutenberg found that water-based ink was completely unsuitable for use with metallic type. Not only was there difficulty in completely coating the type, but the nature of the water-based mixture resulted in poor reproduction of the characters, and print sharpness was lost. A new ink had to be devised because water could no longer be used as the solvent for the carbon. Gutenberg, and later Caxton, and others, experimented and developed their own inks. Coincidentally, developments were taking place at that time in a related craft, and this gave Gutenberg the solution to his problem. A page from the 42-line Bible Until the fifteenth century the medium that artists were using for painting pictures was 19 tempera. . This medium was difficult to use as it dried rapidly, leaving little time to change or correct the work. Artists were therefore experimenting with new materials to overcome this restriction and some success was achieved with drying oils.20 It is quite clear that the use of drying oils in varnishes existed well before the need for a printing ink of a similar nature arose. In fact it is interesting to note that paints made from linseed oil to which litharge21 was added as a drier were used in Roman times, a technique lost to Europe until it re-appeared in the fifteenth century. Gutenberg was given considerable financial backing over a period of years by a merchant/lawyer of Mainz, Johann Fust. In 1454 and 1455 Gutenberg printed some indulgences remarkable for neatness and clarity of comparatively small sizes of type which mark the first examples of this work. In these years he was also working on the 42-line Bible, but he was handicapped by lack of funds and had to apply to Fust for further support. Fust was becoming impatient of the dilatory printer, and although he lent Gutenberg the money, he later sued him for it, perhaps despairing of ever receiving a return on his capital. Gutenberg lost the case and found himself sold up by his backer, who took over his apparatus and entered into partnership with Peter Schöffer, who may have been one of Gutenbergs assistants. This was in 1455, and in the following year the great Bible appeared, the fruits of Gutenbergs labours gathered by his former collaborators. In 1457 Fust and Schöffer issued the famous and beautiful Mainz Psalter of which the red and blue initials were the first successful attempt at colour printing. This was also the first printed book to contain a colophon giving printer, place of printing and date. 19 Whereby pigments were suspended in an albuminous or collodial substance (e.g. egg white or yolk). 20 Oils which have the property of forming a solid, elastic substance when exposed to the air in thin layers. 21 Fused yellow-orange lead monoxide 18 4 Gutenberg experimented with oilbased mediums and found them ideal for printing from metal. 22 He developed his own formulations and produced inks of very high quality. Although the precise details of the composition of these (and later) inks is unrecorded, their basic materials included linseed oil, walnut oil, turpentine, rosin, pitch, Venice turps, lamp-black and vermilion. These inks resemble the paints used by the artist of the day more than the writing inks used by scribes. One of the earliest printed accounts of the manufacture of printing inks is that given by the Venetian Canneparius in his book on inks De Atramentis published in 1660. His ink consisted of :1 lb. of varnish of linseed oil and juniper gum, thoroughly incorporated with 1 oz of smoke-black, and boiled over a slow fire to the required degree of consistency.23 The recipe requires cooking as raw or neat linseed oil is unsuitable as a varnish as it lacks the necessary properties to sit upon the metal type or in the grooves of the engraving plate during the pressure of printing. For painting, the oil was sun thickened to the proper consistency, but for printing, a much more viscous product was required. Poorly prepared oil would also be harmful to the paper and print. In the early days of ink manufacture the boiling of the oil was a matter of combined secrecy and skill on the part of the printer. Raw linseed oil on heating could be clarified. Mucilage24 separated out and was removed by throwing bread into the hot oil to which this sticky substance adhered. Litharge was added producing a quick drying unbodied oil, while prolonged heating at higher temperatures gave rise to bodied oils. Varnish kettle In Brussels in the late Middle Ages, printers and painters were members of the same guild. It may be an indication that the two activities were considered similar, and the term prenter was in use in guilds before Gutenbergs invention was perfected. 23 Mitchell, C, Inks: their composition and manufacture, 1937 p. 229 24 A sticky gelatinous substance 22 5 Temperature was often gauged by adding an onion to the hot oil and noting the extent of the frothing that occurred, while some believed that the finger was the recognised instrument for determining the temperature. In many cases the oil was simply allowed to catch fire for the final thickening. The amount of body was measured by the length of string that could be drawn from the varnish, when cold. Varnishes were further modified by the addition of rosin to accelerate the drying process. The resulting product became known as burnt plate oil or typographic varnish. By the beginning of the seventeenth century water-based printing inks were obsolete and all inks were being made from drying oils and resin. When stocks ran low the printer and his employees took a day off and adjourned outside the city walls to an open space, where they set up the pots in which the oil was to be heated. A late account of such a gathering is given by Th. Goebl, a printers apprentice, writing in 1896, These were the days of ink-making when it was made on a still, sunny day before the city gate, far from the damp air of the printing house, when the fire crackled under the pot, which stood on a trivet in a hole in the ground, and threw fantastic lights on the old city wall, a pleasant interlude in the monotonous profession of the printer - and the festive mood was heightened by the oil-scented warm rolls which had been fried in the varnish25 , with which that ever-thirsty race of men who wield the balls, downed a heart-warming shot of schnapps - which they did, naturally, only to counteract the effects of the fatty oil on the stomach - and then the stirring in of the black provided theprose on a day of festive poetry..26 For more than three hundred years printing inks did not significantly change. The average good black printing ink had little or no effect on the paper, in fact it had a degree of permanency far superior to that of any paper on which it was used. However there was a decline in the quality of printing following the incunabula period27 , when books appear which are virtually unreadable due to staining caused by the ink, both through the paper and around the letter itself. Good ink was the result of infinite patience and care and it is reasonable to assume that good and bad printers treated their ink in the same way as every other aspect of their work. By the late eighteenth century the demand for print in all forms had increased to such an extent that printers found ink-making an onerous task. The providing of a good inck, or rather good varnish for inck, is none of the least incumbent cares upon our master-printer, though custom has almost made it so here in England; for the process of making inck being as both laborious to the body, as noysom and ungrateful to the sense, and by several odd accidents dangerous of firing the place it is made in, our English master-printers do generally discharge themselves of that trouble; and instead of having good inck, content themselves that they pay an inck maker for good inck, which may yet be better or worse according to the conscience of the inck maker.28 It was customary to eat the charred bread, algekröschte rolls, scooped from the surface oil. These rolls were considered a great delicacy and were also praised for their health giving properties. 26 Bloy, C.H., A History of Printing Ink Balls and Rollers 1440-1850, p. 7. 27 An incunabula is an early printed book usually from before 1501. 28 Moxton, Mechanick Exercises (1683), in Mitchell, C, Inks: Their composition and manufacture, 1937, p. 229. 25 6 This encouraged the growth of independent ink-makers, and though it remained for some time as a craft in the hands of printers, it inevitably produced its own specialists who had but a second-hand acquaintance with the craft of printing. The result of this development was the manufacture and distribution by so-called ink-makers of what amounted to little more than pigments ground into varnish, the printer being expected to turn these pastes into workable printing inks by the addition of driers, reducers and erasers.29 After 1820 the black pigment of choice for typographic printing ink shifted, for economic reasons, from lampblack to a black made from coal gas and then to a black made from natural gas, known as carbon black. In 1882 the first work devoted entirely to the subject of printing ink was published. William Savage, one time printer to the Royal Institution, wrote his treatise On Printing Ink, both Black and Coloured. The history of printing from the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century is mainly a record of the development of type design and various minor improvements in the production of type casting moulds and re-designing of presses. Relief printing,30 or the letterpress process, remained the main commercial method of text printing until the early part of the nineteenth century when a number of other printing processes were developed, notably lithography.31 Early printing ink advertisement from Hansards Typographia The invention in the 1790s of the lithographic process by Senefelder greatly increased the scope of the printer and enabled him to produce fine illustrations. Initially printing was by direct lithography (the print being taken directly from an inked lithographic stone) but by the end of the nineteenth century offset lithography largely replaced this method, though direct lithography continued to be used for printing large posters until the end of the 1930s. As less ink was transferred to the paper by offset lithography, it was necessary to formulate inks of appreciably greater colour strength. By the beginning of the twentieth century, as offset lithography expanded, a new chemiThe first socialist ink-making firm in Europe to survive to the present day was established in 1754, The present firm of Mander-Kidd traces its origins to 1733. 30 Printing from surfaces which are raised to a standard height so that the ink is deposited only on the image which is to be transferred to paper. Relief printing includes printing from hand and machine set types or slugs, linocuts, woodcuts wood engravings and photoengraved plates. 31 Lithography is the art or process of printing from a smooth surface (a prepared stone, aluminium or zinc) on which the image to be printed is ink-receptive, the rest being ink-repellent, using the principle that grease and water do not mix. 29 7 cal industry based on coal tar production made possible the introduction of new synthetic pigments with finer texture and greater colour strength. Over the next sixty years the range of synthetic pigments expanded to embrace a complete spectrum of colours allowing the ink maker ever greater flexibility and freedom. Lithography was really the factor that stimulated colour printing because it enabled the production of fine coloured illustrations, and the typographic printers had to occupy their minds in competition with the new process. COLOURED PRINTING INKS After the introduction of moveable type into Europe, hand illumination of religious works still continued on a large scale. The Mainz Psalter32 , 1457, is acknowledged as the first example of use of colour in print in which Peter Schöffer printed in red and black with initial capitals in blue ink (though there is a single page of the paper copy of Gutenbergs 42-line Bible in the British Museum which has been printed (circa 1455) in red). The Psalter includes, in imitation of the contemporary illuminated manuscripts, paragraphs beginning with ornamental capital letters printed in two colours. The initials were constructed in two interlocking pieces which were separately inked and then fitted together in the page of text, the whole being printed at one pull. Illustrations in the earliest books were woodcuts coloured by hand, and not until 1481 was colour printing from several blocks attempted. Further experiments to reproduce multi coloured pictures from wood blocks were made in Germany in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the seventeenth century, that different inks were applied to the different parts of the same engraved metal plate in such a way that all the inks were transferred to the paper in a single pressing. 32 8 This Psalter was signed by Peter Schöffer but some researchers now attribute it to Gutenberg. In 1719 a painter, Jacques-Christophe Le Blond, took out a patent in England for a process that used the three primary colours, blue, yellow and red, together with black for outlining shapes.33 The first patent for making coloured inks was issued in England in 1772 but up until the nineteenth century they were little used as printers found them more difficult to make. Not only were these pigments difficult to grind to a fine enough powder, but each colour required its own proportion of varnishes. The growth of independent ink makers was also the catalyst for a greater use of colour. They made it their task to produce a workable coloured ink, and demand for coloured inks increased rapidly. By the nineteenth century chemical drying agents appeared, making possible the use of a wide variety of pigments for coloured inks. Later, varnishes of varying stiffness were developed to make inks for different papers and presses. Varnish was replaced by mineral oil in inks when high-speed newspaper presses were introduced. The oil base penetrated rapidly into newsprint and dried quickly. By the beginning of the twentieth century ink-making had become a complicated chemical-industrial process. During the nineteenth century many coloured illustrations were produced by lithography. This process, however, created a new challenge for the ink-maker. Inks had to be modified and carefully formulated to resist water successfully. They continued, however, to be based on linseed oil and rosin with the addition of waxes and other additives which appeared to improve the printing qualities. In addition the invention of synthetic dyes in the 1860s provided a means of preparing coloured solutions that were free of tiny, insoluble particles. Present day colour printing is governed entirely by the photoengraving process which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and is used for letterpress, lithography and photogravure.34 As a word of warning coloured inks should never be employed when permanence is of primary importance and in general the factors affecting the permanency of coloured writing inks, also apply to coloured printing inks. Pigments, especially earth colours, give the fastest effects, but lack brilliance. Bright aniline colours are in many cases very fugitive and are readily bleached by light. Modern Printing Inks Modern printing inks have progressed far from the time when they were made by grinding carbon in the form of vegetable char with a varnish made of natural gums and Using a dense grid, he engraved four metal plates, bringing out on each the relative importance of the colour involved. The same sheet of paper then went through four successive impressions, each in a different colour. 34 An intaglio process (printing from a metal plate, usually copper, on which the image areas of the surface are incised by gravers or etched by acid) for the making by photographic means of an image on an etched copper surface from which it can be printed on to another surface, usually paper. 33 9 drying oils. They are now formulated to take into account the surface to be imprinted, the printing process to be used, and any special requirements needed, such as colour, opacity, transparency, brilliance, lightfastness, surface hardness, pliability, wetability, purity, and odourlessness. Low speed letterpress printing - the process usually used in book production - uses inks that are compounded of carbon black, a heavy varnish, and a drier to reduce the drying time. Many other vehicles, pigments, and modifiers may also be used. For the intaglio process, used in printing newspaper supplements and cartons, labels, and wrappers, the inks are composed of petroleum naphthas, resins and coal-tar solvents. Plastic materials are usually printed with aniline inks, which contain methyl alcohol, synthetic resins, and shellac. Since the 1920s, and the introduction of the first synthetic resins, derivatives of phenolformaldehyde polymers, there has been close collaboration between the printing ink industry and universities which has led to a greater understanding of the underlying principles of ink behaviour and laid the foundation for the rapid expansion in ink technology, accelerated by the development of the petrochemical industry at the end of the 1940s. Many new pigments, polymers, solvents and additives have been developed, which the ink chemist has been able to adapt and incorporate into ink. From the 1950s onwards the ink industry was further transformed by the tremendous expansion of the packaging industry and new technology used in the publishing and printing of magazines. The craft of printing was transformed into highly sophisticated technology which could only be satisfied by an equally developed ink industry. It is ironic, however, that in the 1990s much research and development effort is being spent in developing water-based inks which is how the ink-maker started some thousand years ago; although, now of course, for twentieth century environmental reasons. 10 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloy, C. H. A History of Printing Ink Balls and Rollers 1440-1850 Evelyn Adams & Mackay Ltd; London (1967) Gettens, R.J. and Stout, G.L. Painting Materials: a short encyclopaedia Dover Publications, Inc., New York (1966) Glaister, G. A. Glaisters Glossary of the Book, 2nd edition. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London (1979) Hamel, Christopher de Scribes and Illuminators British Museum London (1992) Press, Hamm, Patricia Dacus A History of the Manufacture of Printing Ink from 1500-1900 with Notes for the Conservator IPC Conference Manchester (1992) Papers Jackson, Donald The Story of Writing Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., London (1981) Jennett, Sean The Making of Books 5th edition First edition 1951 Faber & Faber Ltd. (1973) Leach R. H. and Pierce, R. J. (ed) The Printing Ink Manual 5th edition (First edition 1961) Blueprint, London (1993) Mitchell, C. Ainsworth, Inks: their Composition and Manufacture including Methods of Examination and a full list of British patents, 4th edition Charles Griffin & Company Ltd., London (1937) Rawlings, G. B. Whalley, Muriel E. The Story of Books The Permanence of Inks The New Encyclopaedia Britannia, 15th edition Hodder and Stoughton Publishers, London (n.d.) Research Plans & Publications Section, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa (November 1939 NRC No 880) William Benton, Publishers (1979) 11
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