Bloxam says that the coloring matter of grapes and of red wine appears to be "cyanin."One of the methods of treating wine lees, as translated in the eighteenth century from an old Italian secreta, is sufficiently curious to partly quote:
"Dry the Lees (dregs) of wine with a gentle fire and fill with them two third of a large earthen Retort, place this retort in a reverberatory furnace, and fitting it to a large receiver, give a small fire to it to heat the Retort by degrees, and drive forth an insipid phlegm; when vapours begin to rise, you must take out the phlegm and luting carefully the junctures of your vessels, quicken the fire little by little until you find the receiver filled with white clouds;continue it in this condition, and you perceive the receiver to cool, raise the fire to the utmost extremity, and continue it so, until there arise no more vapours. When the vessels are cold unlute the receiver, and shaking it to make the Volatile salt, which sticks to it, fall to the bottom, pour it all into a bolt-head; fit it to a Head with a small receiver;lute well the junctures and placing it in sand, give a little fire under it, and the volatile salt will rise and stick to the head, and the top of the Bolt-head; take off your head and set on another in its place; gather your salt and stop it tip quickly, for it easily dissolves into a liquor; continue the fire, and take care to gather the Salt according as you see it appear; but when there rises no more salt, a liquor will distill, of which you must draw about three ounces, and put out the fire," &c.
The "lees of wine," in connection with the ancient methods of ink-making is also referred to by the younger Pliny in his twenty-fifth book, which the Edinburgh Review has carefully translated and printed:
"INK (or literally) BLACKING.--Ink also may be set down among the artificial (or compound)drugs, although it is a mineral derived from two sources. For, it is sometimes developed in the form of a saline efflorescence,--or is a real mineral of sulphureous color--chosen for this purpose.
There have been painters who dug up from graves colored coals (CARBON). But all these are useless and new-fangled notions. For it is made from soot in various forms, as (for instance) of burnt rosin or pitch. For this purpose, they have built manufactories not emitting that smoke. The ink of the very best quality is made from the smoke of torches. An inferior article is made from the soot of furnaces and bath-house chimneys. There are some (manufacturers) also, who employ the dried lees of wine; and they do say that if the lees so employed were from good wine, the quality of the ink is thereby much improved. Polygnotus and Micon, celebrated painters at Athens, made their black paint from burnt grape-vines; they gave it the name of TRYGYNON. APELLES, we are told, made HIS from burnt ivory, and called it elephantina 'ivory-black.' Indigo has been recently imported,--a substance whose composition I have not yet investigated. The dyers make theirs from the dark crust that gradually accumulates on brass-kettles.
Ink is made also from torches (pine-knots), and from charcoal pounded fine in mortars. 'The cuttlefish' has a remarkable qualify in this respect;but the coloring-matter which it produces is not used in the manufacture of ink. All ink is improved by exposure to the sun's rays. Book-writers' ink has gum mixed with it,--weavers' ink is made up with glue. Ink whose materials have been liquified by the agency of an acid is erased with great difficulty."There are but few exceptions respecting the general sameness of ink receipts of the succeeding centuries, one of which is the "Pomegranate," credited to the seventh century but really belonging to an earlier period:
"Of the dried Pommegranite (apple) rind take an ounce, boil it in a pint of water until 3/4 be gone; add 1/2 pint of small beer wort and once more boil it away so that only a 1/4 pint remain.
After you shall have strained it, boiling hot through a linnen cloth and it comes cold, being then of a glutinous consistence, drop in a 'bit' of Sal Alkali and add as much warm water as will bring it to a due fluidity and a gold brown color for writing with a pen."Following this formula and without any modifications, I obtained an excellent ink of durable quality, but of poor color, from a standpoint of blackness.
A less ancient "Secreta," signed by the Italian monk "Theophilus," who lived about the commencement of the eleventh century, is most interesting:
