I still enjoy going to my secret oak gall location…  

     In a previous post I did give you some clues as to its whereabouts. Walking into the fen with its stagnant pools of water and gold dredge tailings calls for caution. The rattlesnakes are hibernating so…    

 …I have time to look among the detritus for the new growth of oak trees full of clusters of oak galls. 

     You want to find the newer oak galls that are not black with mould or bear the holes showing the wasps escape. These are the ones that hold the most potential to make gallotannic acid. 

     The next time we meet I hope to detail the alchemy involved…

photos by Samantha Bryson

Professor Asperity had me get up early on a cold December day to set up his traveling gypsy tent for the McHenry Mansion Dickens Christmas Faire. He spares me a few farthings as his roustabout hammering in the tent spikes.

Twas a jolly good time though explaining the alchemy of creating handmade oak gall ink, and I think I’m getting better at my “snake oil salesman’s smirk.”  Once the children saw the calligraphy lettering they could do using oak gall ink and feather quill pens, they got excited and I was really blessed.

Photos by Samantha Bryson

Today I got away from the flatlanders and went up into them thar hills to Columbia Booksellers & Stationers in Columbia State Historic Park, CA. The fire doors and brick walls reminded me of the fires that tore through this gold rush boomtown.

The proprietor of the store is a wealth of knowledge on lore and legend (ask him how the stagecoach robber Black Bart was finally caught).

His shelves display quill pens, ink wells, powdered oak gall ink, and now Professor Asperity’s Oak Gall Ink. He was very gracious to display my wares, and I’m excited because I know people from all over come here on their way to Yosemite.

If you have been to the amazing inkers emporium called Castle in the Air in Berkeley, California, you may have seen my display of inks. Packaging is half the fun of ink making, especially making the hand made labeling, cork, string, and wax seal on the bottles look old. I take particular delight in my childhood memories of visiting Columbia State Historic Park during 6th grade camp. I treasured those “old” bank notes I purchased at the general store. I didn’t know at the time they were aged with tannin. I will be going to Columbia soon to set up a display of my inks in one of those same stores…

   If you wonder about “secret” recipes for making oak gall ink, you have no further to look than that electronic manuscript called the world wide web. There you will find many academic sites, latin, and the cynipadae. 

     But where do you actually find those strange black balls in oak trees that we used to throw at each other as children?

     I chose to go a long distance out in the country to find mine. I thought to throw a rope into the older oak tree branches to knock down oak galls (you want to find the newer ones), until I saw them clustered in the branches of young oak saplings in an area that could only be described as a fen.

     The area is cluttered with river rock tailings of long gone dredging boats searching for gold. There are many low spots full of brackish water: perfect home for Naegleria Fowleri, the parasite known as brain-eating amoeba. I told you in an earlier post that to be an ink maker you must be willing to muck among the detritus!

     A local farmer whose Irish ancestor was given an all expense paid trip to the then not so “vacation resort” of Australia by the English (and only found his way to America by jumping off a ship and swimming to shore) seemed to enjoy telling me this remote area with its ready water source and great distance from the local constabulary was known in the past for its bootlegging.

     He told me of the Dutchman of whom all the local farmers had wondered out loud why he was collecting pallet after pallet of bricks. Their answer came when two castle turrets slowly rose above the almond orchard canopy.

     So I do my harvesting here in this forlorn little forest. I’m hoping for the day when the master of the castle will let me stand very still inside my suit of medieval armor in his hallway…because children always wonder if there’s someone inside.

     Perhaps there is something in the water.

     There is something about making hand made labels, glueing them on antique cork bottles, tying them with jute string and sealing them with wax. If you enjoy wrapping something in kraft paper, you know what I mean. Maybe it’s the desire some of us have always had to own a little shop with clear stained glass display windows and an iron sign hanging above the door.

     I found my victorian era wax seal replica at an antique store in Santa Cruz. In another antique store I found 40 turn of the century dipping pen nibs in their original labeled box. I bought the whole box knowing their rarity and that their workmanship was probably better than today’s nibs. How can I make such an assertion? Certain watches may take a licking and keep on ticking, but my Waltham pocket watch is still running, and it was made in 1893…

(Pocket watch chain by The Dragon’s Treasure)

     Finding antique cork bottles and the right pot (preferably iron) for brewing ink is often a matter of searching in antique and salvage stores. So today I am expectantly relishing my visit to Urban Salvage. You find hidden treasures there that you know probably belonged to someone’s great grandfather, just sitting for years in some sealed up room until a picker named Pat opens the chest…

     I enjoy making and packaging handmade inks. I try to imagine what they would look like on the shelf in some dry goods and sundries store next to a jar of horehound candy and a bolt of periwinkle calico.

Inquiries about my ink may be made at Castle in the Air, in Berkeley, California.