TY - CONF A1 - Colini, Claudia T1 - Fifty shades of black: Typologies and terminology of black inks in the light of new discoveries N2 - The identification of the materials constituting an artefact is the basis of any correct conservation project. For this reason (among others) in the last 50 years analytical techniques have been applied to the study of manuscripts. Unfortunately, the scientific investigation of Arabic books is still uncommon, focusing mainly on single case studies of illuminated manuscripts where the black media used to write the text is largely overlooked. This lack of knowledge prompted a recent research in which black ink recipes have been collected from written Arabic sources, their feasibility has been assessed, and some of them have been reproduced. These samples were artificially aged and analysed through an array of analytical techniques, mostly non-invasive and non-destructive, in order to build a database of Arabic inks and their ingredients and to verify the detection limits of the equipment employed. Finally, the results were compared to the data collected from historical manuscripts. In this talk I will focus on the ink typologies and the terminology (ancient and modern) used to describe them. In particular I will highlight how even the modern classification fails to capture the variety encountered in both recipes and manuscripts, particularly in the light of recent discoveries. I will address especially the terminological and conceptual issues of mixed inks – in the form of carbon inks and tannins, of carbon and iron gall inks, and of carbon and metallic salts –, iron gall inks made without vitriol and iron gall inks made with sources of tannins different from gall nuts. T2 - First International Conference Oriental Manuscripts: Codicology and Conservation issues CY - Saint Petersburg, Russia DA - 04.12.2019 KW - Ink terminology KW - Codicology KW - Non destructive analytical techniques PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-50159 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -