India ink
Basic India ink is composed of a variety of fine soot, known as lampblack, combined with water to form a liquid.
[4][5] A considerable number of oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty contain incised characters with black pigment from a carbonaceous material identified as ink.
[7] Numerous documents written in ink on precious stones as well as bamboo or wooden tablets dating to the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and Qin period have been uncovered.
[7] A cylindrical artifact made from black ink has been found in Qin tombs, dating back to the 3rd century BC during the Warring States or dynastic period, from Yunmeng, Hubei.
[14] The author Song Yingxing (c. 1600–1660) of the Ming dynasty has described the inkmaking process from pine soot in his work Tiangong Kaiwu.
[15] In 1738, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde described the Chinese manufacturing process for lampblack from oil as: "They put five or six lighted wicks into a vessel full of oil, and lay upon this vessel an iron cover, made in the shape of a funnel, which must be set at a certain distance so as to receive all the smoke.
When it has received enough, they take it off, and with a goose feather gently brush the bottom, letting the soot fall upon a dry sheet of strong paper.
The lampblack which is not fetched off with the feather, and which sticks very fast to the cover, is coarser, and they use it to make an ordinary sort of ink, after they have scraped it off into a dish.
"[16] The Chinese had used India ink derived from pine soot prior to the 11th century AD, when the polymath official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the mid Song dynasty became troubled by deforestation (due to the demands of charcoal for the iron industry) and sought to make ink from a source other than pine soot.
He believed that petroleum (which the Chinese called 'rock oil') was produced inexhaustibly within the earth and so decided to make an ink from the soot of burning petroleum, which the later pharmacologist Li Shizhen (1518–1593) wrote was as lustrous as lacquer and was superior to pine soot ink.
[22] For instance, in the 17th century, Louis LeComte said of Chinese ink that "it is most excellent; and they have hitherto vainly tried in France to imitate it.
"[22] These qualities were described by Berthold Laufer: "It produces, first of all, a deep and true black; and second, it is permanent, unchangeable in color, and almost indestructible.
