TY - CONF A1 - Hahn, Oliver T1 - More than 25 years of ink analysis non-destructive testing of black writing materials N2 - Writing inks can be divided into soluble inks and dispersion inks. Soluble inks are based on plant or insect dyes forming a water solution. In the early European Middle Ages brown plant inks were usually produced from the blackthorn bark and wine. In contrast to these soluble brown inks, one of the oldest black writing materials was produced by mixing soot with gum arabic or animal glue dissolved in a small amount of water. From Pliny’s detailed account of the manufacture of various black carbon inks, we learn that producing pure soot of high quality was not an easy task in Antiquity. Iron gall inks are a borderline case between these two groups. They are produced from four basic ingredients: gallic acid, an iron-containing component, gum arabic as a binding media, and an aqueous medium such as wine, beer, or vinegar. By mixing gallic acid with soluble iron ions, a water-soluble ferrous gallate complex is formed. Exposure to oxygen leads to the formation of insoluble black ferric gallate pigment. Due to the variety of recipes and the natural origin of raw materials, there is a wide range of different components and impurities in writing inks. The Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg (CSMC) has developed a protocol for ink analysis. It consists of a primary screening to determine the type of the ink and a subsequent in-depth analysis using several spectroscopic techniques (X-ray fluorescence analysis and vibrational spectroscopy). This contribution presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of historical writing inks to characterize distinguishable inks in manuscripts, to determine the origin of manuscripts, and to assign unknown fragments to time and place. T2 - Beyond the reconstruction of an Urtext: “About the history of the early Qurʾānic text with regard to digital research tools” CY - Hesse, Germany DA - 07.07.2025 KW - Archaeometry KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Material analysis KW - Cultural heritage PY - 2025 AN - OPUS4-63906 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ketelsen, T. A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Golle, U. T1 - Blindness and Insight. The Rhetoric of Connoisseurship and the Investigation of Materiality. N2 - The aim of the lecture is to present the productive interplay of connoisseurs and material analysis using the example of selected drawings from the Rembrandt collection of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. We try to determine the point at which the question of the materiality of the drawings makes sense in the traditional discourse of connoisseurship. On the one hand, this involves the question of authorship – Rembrandt – or not? – and the locating of attributed drawings in the context of the work. On the other hand, it is about making drawing processes visible, characterizing ways of drawing and workshop practices as well as distinguishing different forms of reworking and copying within the Rembrandt workshop. The material analyses culminate in the question of whether Rembrandt’s inks can be distinguished at all. It becomes apparent that the newly gained knowledge about the materiality of the drawing no longer reveals itself to the “mere” view of the connoisseur. Rather, it is only generated by the digital image. The rhetoric of connoisseurs must therefore be contrasted with the necessity of a hermeneutics of the digital image. The envisaged “material turn” of drawing science is thus simultaneously able to take up the critique of the question of authorship, which has been growing ever more recently, and to transfer it to a more comprehensive perspective of aesthetics of production. T2 - Drawings by Rembrandt. Connecting art history, science and conservation CY - Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands DA - 06.02.2020 KW - Rembrandt KW - Drawings KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Inks KW - Paper PY - 2020 AN - OPUS4-50384 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Nöller, Renate ED - Dora, C. ED - Fabian, C. ED - Knoche, M. ED - Linder, M. ED - Mittler, E. ED - Schmitz, W. T1 - Writing inks in the Manuscripta Americana – a pilot study N2 - The manuscripts – which have been inventoried as Manuscripta Americana in the State Library of Berlin and the Biblioteka Jagellońska in Krakow with the signatures Ms. Americ. 1-15 – are codices mainly from the colonial times of the 16th to 18th centuries. They uniquely reflect the relationships between indigenous culture and Spanish colonial masters. This study focusses on the scientific investigation of three manuscripts (Manuscripta Americana 3, 8, and 10) that are kept today in Krakow. It is assumed that these three parts belong together in a certain way, so various material analyses were carried out to prove this assumption. The scientific investigation focusses on the different black and brown writing inks. T2 - Manuscripta Americana: Aufarbeitung einer Sammlung CY - Ibero-Amerikanisches-Institut, SPK DA - 14.02.2019 KW - Humboldt Codices KW - Writing inks KW - Non-destructive testing PY - 2020 SN - 978-3-447-11511-7 SN - 0067-8236 VL - 53 SP - 21 EP - 32 PB - Harrassowitz Verlag CY - Wiesbaden AN - OPUS4-51935 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Colini, Claudia A1 - Shevchuk, I. A1 - Huskin, K. A. A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Hahn, Oliver ED - Quenzer, J. B. T1 - A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media N2 - Our standard protocol for the characterisation of writing materials within advanced manuscript studies has been successfully used to investigate manuscripts written with a pure ink on a homogeneous writing surface. However, this protocol is inadequate for analysing documents penned in mixed inks. We present here the advantages and limitations of the improved version of the protocol, which now includes imaging further into the infrared region (1100−1700 nm). KW - Archaeometry KW - Manuscripts KW - Non-destructive testing PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-543454 SN - 978-3-11-074545-0 DO - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-009 VL - 25 SP - 161 EP - 182 PB - Walter de Gruyter GmbH CY - Berlin/Boston AN - OPUS4-54345 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -