European Ink Recipes Found in ‘Ali Ḥosseini’s 19th Century Persian Treatise Kašf al-Ṣanāye‘ (Discovering Crafts) – کشف الصنایع علی حسینی

Abstract

Abstract There have been many treatises left behind by Persian master calligraphers detailing the different aspects of the art of the book such as book binding, types of paper, calligraphic styles and their importance, reed pens and cutting styles for calligraphy, as well as the construction of dyes, pigments, sizing, and of course, inks. While these treatises almost exclusively focus on traditional Persian crafts, the manuscript researched in this paper is dedicated to the western crafts and recipes which were gathered and translated into Persian by ‘Ali Ḥosseini, a 19th century Iranian scholar. Furthermore, he used the English terms of ingredients and transliterated them in Persian during translation, which can make deciphering the recipes very challenging for the average reader. The current paper focuses on the ink making recipes of the manuscript Kašf al-Ṣanāye‘ translated from European source.