Berry inks:

Pokeberry (Concord roadside)

Elderberry (Sudbury backyard)

Beet (Gaining Ground)

bark/tree pigments

berry pigments

flower/earth pigments

gathered plants to print

new pigment charts grouped by type: bark/tree, berry, flower/earth

todo: inks from pokeberry, Walden Pond mud, celandine poppy, sycamore fruits

Went over to Gaining Ground today to harvest some Weld in full bloom to try to make a yellow lake pigment.  There is some Madder and Weld growing there from a previous farmer who planted a dye garden.  There isn’t a lot out there about making pigments, certainly not lake pigments, so we’ll see how this experiment goes.

Buckthorn berries have been called an invasive, but who really knows what invasive means these days?  That language suggests objects and beings that belong and those that don’t along a lineage of ownership, shared identity, and centrality.  The issues with this kind of thinking run through so much these days, but in this case, what can they possibly mean?  Our climate is changing, so our backyards are changing.  What is there now may not be there in 20 or 50 years.  More so, what is there now most likely wasnt’ all there 50 years ago.  This Concordia landscape was more at a low of around 25% forest in Thoreau’s time, and now is more than 80%.  Trees and species that comprise and love the open fields, farmlands, and shrubs have little hope of finding a home now.  Species that find …

wild black raspberries growing along parking lot median, got a few before the deer (who have been abundantly eating the Annual Sowthistle and other plants).  we’ll see  if this ink has more permanence than the last batch of juneberry ink

collected to make ink.  steeping in hot water now.  Likely will just make a very weak yellowy green wash.

Lots of Buckthorn growing on the edge of the wetlands

  From the dried berries, a series of rich but fugitive colours is obtained; the berries used to be sold under the name of ‘French berries’ and imported with those of Rhamnus infectorius from the Levant. If gathered before ripe, the berries furnish a yellow dye, used formerly for staining maps or paper. When ripe, if mixed with gum-arabic and limewater, they form the pigment ‘Sap or bladder green,’ so well known to water-colour painters. The bark also affords a yellow dye..

Buckthorn berry juice contains Rhamnocathartin (which is yellowand uncrystallizable), Rhamnin, a peculiar tannic acid, sugar and gum. The fresh juice is coloured red by acids and yellow by alkalies, and has a bitter taste and nauseous odour. Its specific gravity should be between 1.035 and 1.070, but it is seldom …

gathered tufted vetch flowers from around the parking lot margins, boiled them for a few minutes, all the color disappeared and I have another light green ink.

hemlock bark–red, orange, rust, brown

6/3 making the broadside today at FSC

6/3 observations from visit to Nuclear Metals Superfund site with Richard Primack

after a couple days in the solar cooker

At my visit with Richard Primack to Nuclear Metals Superfund site in West Concord, I gathered quite a bit of bark from a fallen Hemlock tree.  Hemlock’s have one of the highest concentrations of tannin in their bark, leading to over 70 million being felled in a few decades during the industrial era.  The remaining Hemlock’s have been blighted by the Woolly Adelgid insect.