Red ink is the second most used ink in Malay manuscripts after the black one. Just like the black ink which can be produced using various pigment sources, the red ink recipes offer some basic ingredients from which the red pigment can be extracted. Here I would like to share how to make red ink from sapan wood.
Sapan wood--we call it bak seupeueng in Aceh--has long been used for multiple purposes such as herbal medicine and textile colouring substance. For the ink making, it has been used since the 12th century. Its red pigment comes from the substance called "brazilien" it contains; the term sounds like "Brazil", doesn't it? Let's talk about it at another time.
Other ingredients required are vinegar, alum, and gum Arabic. First of all, the sapan wood--the dried slices of the powder one--has to be soaked into the vinegar--I used an apple vinegar. For this, you would need a jar; I would recommend the one transparent so that you could follow the colour changes during the fermentation. The jar should then be left for 24 hours. |
| Ingredients to make red in |
Sapan wood is known with various names. In Aceh in particular, nowadays, its function as a colourant to make red ink is hardly heard anymore. Indeed, it is very easy to find the already dried sapan wood in traditional drugstore. But I think nobody in the store can get you the sapan wood if you mention "pohon sapan" (Indonesian) or "bak seupeung" (Acehnese). Rather, it is simply recognised as "pohon secang," the name with which it is more popular somewhere outside Aceh--e.g. in Java.
To make the red ink, one needs to get the internal part of the wood, the part below its skin. In Banda Aceh, 200 gr dried slices of the wood costs only Rp. 5000 in traditional drugstore. However, it is better to use the wood powder if availble--I prefer this one. But since it not obtainable in Aceh, it ordered it online.
After that, boil the sapan-infused vinegar. Make sure you measure the volume of the liquid. You can simply use the end of your spoon handle. The boiling should leave only a half of the volume. In other words, once you dip the spoon end into the liquid, the surface level is the point before it is boiled, and it should shrink to remain a half of it.
While boiling, add one and a half spoon of alum. Here you would see how the brownish liquid instantly turns red because of chemical reaction. Then, add the gum Arabic. It is better to have the powder one. But, in Banda Aceh I could only obtain the one still in chunks which is not very suitable for the ink making. Because it functions as the adhesive that binds the colour with paper when it used for writing. So, the powder one can diffuse better in the liquid .
As the liquid volume has shrinked into a half, you need to filter it to separate the ink from the sediment. I used gauze for this. But because it is a loosely woven cloth, some small sediment still could escape. So, I just did the filtering several times. Now, the ink is ready to use.
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| Red ink test |
Besides the sapan wood, red colour is also obtainable from cinnabar. The recipe includes green wallnut, green oak gall, Isfahani ithmid (kohl) and myrtle; all these have to be dried for 40 days before being mixed with water and put into a jar. The cinnabar is added thereafter to turn the mixture into red. However, I am not sure if this is a recipe used for the Malay traditional ink.
Another colorant used to make red ink is Malabar spinach--we call it in Aceh "bak leumbayông." There are only few sources discussing the red pigment it has for ink making. I just heard it from my father saying he ever saw someone in his village using the plant to make ink. But he is not certain whether or not it was a red one. Recently, I've just bought a small leumbayông tree, hoping to make a red ink from it someday.
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| Leumbayông tree |
Sources:
Armitage, A., & Beresford, L. (2013). Mapping the New World: Renaissance maps from the American Museum in Britain. Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers.
Ibn Bādīs. (1989). ‘Umdat al-Kuttāb wa ‘Uddatu Żawī al-Albāb. Masyhad: Majma‘ al-Buḥuṡ al-Islāmiyyah.
