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ACTIVITY KIT: 16th C Hugh Plat Turning Blue ink into Red
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In the 16th century, ink was made with either carbon ink recipes of iron gall ink recipes for basic writing of letters or the average penmanship. Blue and red did exist, however, and this week, we are going to explore how to make red ink from blue ink using a recipe written in 1594 by Sir Hugh Plat in his book, The Jewel House of Art and Nature. As you can tell from the many portraits and paintings from the time period, or even the elaborate drawings inside publications like the Paston Letters, a wide variety of other colors existed as well. Two that were popular for scribes were blue ink and red ink, which while rare in terms of their wide usage, were common enough that Sir Hugh Plat, who is famous for writing 16th how to manuals for the average household, including a fun little experiment that helps kill two birds with one stone, or in this case--two inks with one pen. RELATED EPISODE YOU MIGHT ENJOY Hello there, I’m Cassidy Cash, I am host of That Shakespeare Life, and every Saturday I share with you a small snippet from the life of William Shakespeare. This week we are exploring a fun experiment from a 16th century household manual written by Sir Hugh PLat that shows you how to write with Blue and Red ink at the same time. This experiment can be completed at home with items you either already have or can easily acquire, so let’s get started. Excerpt from pg. 63 of The Jewel House of Art and Nature by Hugh Plat (1594) describing how to turn blue ink red using "hazel nut of litmus blewe". 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