Kremer Pigments Inc. NYC: Historical use of Shellac Ink

Historical use of Shellac Ink

02 February 2011

There have been several questions in the past few days regarding our shellac inks (180990). Is shellac ink a historical product or a new invention? How is this vehicle different from shellac varnish? Here we will explore the history of this unique emulsion.

Ink made from a white lac and borax solution was introduced by George Field in his publication Chromatography (1835) as a modification of a traditional Indian painting method.

Field praised the combination of lac and borax as being equally miscible in water and oil, enduring minimal shrinkage in drying and providing a paint film impenetrable by moisture yet flexible and resistant to cracking.

This vehicle had long been used in India by a process in which lac is saponified by borax and rendered water soluble. Field objected, however, to the opacity and dark color of the unrefined lac used in the traditional medium. In 1827, Field and a Mr. Luning of Apothecaries’-hall both presented methods for decolorizing lac resin (60490). A renewed interest in utilizing the dark resin might have been a result of the increasing demand for lac dye as a substitute for the costly cochineal dyestuff. Lac resin was, at the time, simply disposed of as a by product of preparing the dye.

Fields’ recipe:
1 part borax (64000) dissolved in 12 parts boiling water

add this solution in “equal or other proportions” to white lac varnish (pale lac (60450) dissolved in alcohol and decanted to separate any impurities), and a transparent, colorless liquid is formed.

Field notes that the “tenacity and adhesion” of lac vehicles benefit from the hotter climate of India (than England, in the author’s case), and recommends artificially heating the studio to recreate this environment.

Venetians employed oils and varnishes only as preservatives or to protect their works – not as vehicles of their colors. Field suggests that emulsions (“water with proper additions”) were used instead. He offers the probability that early painters used an oil ground and laid underpainting using size or water vehicle such as lac and borax emulsion – supportive evidence is the fluxing by fire into glass (citing research by P. Rainer, Esq. described in a series of articles published by John Eagles). The “true” Venetian process was considered to have used soap and alkalis to a similar end, but Field relays a statement that these as inferior to the borax vehicle.

Recipes for the saponified shellac emulsion were found in few subsequent sources in the 19th century – one as a dryer for oil colors and as a fast drying varnish (Winckler 1889, p.266 and Vibert 1892, pp 190-191) with no identified use. In the 1939 publication Articles of Stationary and Allied Materials: Their Chemistry and Technical Examination, the authors Bromley and Shore describe the addition of shellac or rosin dissolved in borax to modern inks to duplicate the virtues of old carbon inks while imparting water-resistance, thus making them excellent for linear drawing and laying down rich black mass tones.

30 years later, Kurt Wehlte describes the saponification process in detail in his Materials and Techniques of Painting and offers the following recipe for “shellac soap”:

1/3 oz. (10g) Borax
7 fl. oz. (200mL) hot water
1 oz. (30g) bleached shellac, crushed

Dissolve the borax in the hot water. Sprinkle in the shellac. Do not boil.

We offer a premade shellac powder with borax (product 60470) which makes it easy, with the addition of water, to create your own vehicle for pigmented inks. We also offer our shellac ink diluter (product 180420), which can be used both as a base and as an extender to increase transparency of your inks and retain the water resistance and gloss of the shellac paint film.

Technical information for our inks is available through links on each product page.

References
Carlyle, Leslie. The Artist’s Assistant. Archetype, 2001 (product BOCARLYLE)
Wehlte, Kurt. The Materials and Techniques of Painting. Kremer, 1975. (product BOWEHLTE REPRINT)
Field, George (Chromatography, or, A treatise on colours and pigments, and of their powers) 1841 edition, pp. 349-352.
Watrous, James. The Craft of Old Master Drawings. University of Wisconsin Press, 1957.