Inkiland: the country of the ink.

Since its invention, ink has not stopped transmitting the creativity and the knowledge of the human being. Inks never stopped going with us in all aspects of life, from the clothes we use, the graphic messages we get, the information, the artistic proposals... we can say that the use of ink in its variety of aspects is just a development rate of civilization. We live in a world of ink

And in the country of ink, the notebook is the king.

Notebooks hide the most valuable content a person has inside: their ideas, their thoughts, their creativity. An intimate space which is just a feeling expression field, something alive that is constantly playing with the inner and outer parts, the personal and the social sphere, a space which opens and closes at will to receive our most private world.

Inkiland notebooks.

The Inkiland notebooks are attractive proposals to catch our ideas and emotions. A notebook has an incomparable advantage: it can be used at any time, whenever inspiration comes, wherever it comes. And what is there kept, has the gift of spontaneity, it is dyed by the moment it was made. Everything (the script, the stroke, the colours, the pressure and the kind of letters) will be a precise reflection of the precise moment when the muses blow... No technology can provide the freedom of expression at any time and keep the emotion that inspired it in such a light and versatile medium.

At the end, a notebook keeps our feelings, our creativity, our emotions; it becomes a faithful reflection of our personality, unique and unrepeatable.

A notebook hides from your deepest thoughts to the most practical questions, from a simple list to a poem or a drawing or annotation. You can be sure: with an Inkiland notebook, inspiration is always with you.

A bit of history.

Since the beginning of times, the human being has captured their fears and their dreams in all kind of mediums using several inking procedures: pigments diluted in oil, water, yolk, etc. But it is ink (grinded charcoal diluted in vegetal or animal resins) the one that gathers a characteristic that makes it especially significant to us: it is used both to paint and draw and to write.

It’s this characteristic that impressed in the ancient China a generation of literate painters that marked the top of the usage of this technique to combine pictorial talent and handwriting.

We could say, in a free interpretation, it also was the golden age for the visual thinking, because these artists tried to express the essence of objects rather than their appearance, so that they anticipated the artistic vanguards of the 20th century.

Chinese ink, the king of all inks

Chinese ink is a Chinese invention used mainly in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, as well as in Chinese painting and Japanese sumi-e.

It is composed by very thinly grinded charcoal, which condenses and compacts with some kind of water-based glue, such as vegetal resins or some animal extracts. With the grinded charcoal and glue some ingot-shaped little sticks are formed which are pressed and then left dry until reaching a totally solid consistence. This ink in a solid state can last for ages or centuries without losing its properties.

The ink’s quality depends on many factors, such as the wood the charcoal comes from, the pressing process, the glue used, the time it has got, etc. and there are from very cheap sticks to collector’s pieces.

The ink is usually black, although it can also be mixed with colorants to get inks of other colours.

To prepare liquid ink from these sticks they must be rubbed on a specially designed rough stone for such effect, which in Japanese is called “suzuri”. These stones, with different shapes and aspects, have in common they are all composed by a rough material and they have a cavity. Generally, Chinese-origin stones are concave-shaped, with the lower part in the middle, and the Japanese ones are usually flat with one side downwards.

Some water is poured on these stones before rubbing the stick on them, so that it is always damp. The continuous rubbing on the stone with the water thaws progressively the ink, which mixed up with the water in the cavity is slowly dissolved. This process can continue until the ink gets the required density, but generally it lasts few minutes.

The liquid ink, already prepared, is easily dried and it is advisable not to let it dry on the stone or the paintbrush.

Nowadays you can also achieve already prepared Chinese ink pots, which are very dense and can be used directly or dissolved with some water.

Other inks

The oldest varieties of ink, apart from the Chinese one, include several colorants made from metals, the shell of different seeds and marine animals like the squid or the octopus. Walnut ink was used by many ancient artists to get golden brown coloration used in their drawings.

The ancient (400 BC.) knew the use of black ink (atramentum) and they used it to write with quills or paintbrushes; it was composed by carbon black and rubber. Emperors and kings wrote with purple ink (sacrum encaustum), this ink was made from murex blood, shell where purple colour remains. They were the only who had the right to use it and The Emperor of the East Leon Augustus decreed an express law stating that the purple sign was exclusive for the majesty, ordering the imperial inscriptions to be only made in purple.

Gold or silver letters were also used to write some books such as the sacred books translated by the seventy-two interpreters and copied in parchment with gold letters that Eleazar, prince of the priests sent to Ptolomy II Philadelfus, a copy proving the age of this custom. In the East Empire the practice of gold writing was so accepted that Constantine’s history mentions the gold letters chrysographers or writers’ service.

Anciently, coloured ink was used, which they called indifferently milton, minium, cinnabar and synopsis whose voices are explained by Plyni. This colour was used for capital letters, headings and synopsis of the laws sections. This resume made memory and intelligence easier, and its colour probably gives the name of rubrics to the laws titles, the ecclesiastic rubrics and even the supreme right or sovereignty right like the one coming from the laws of the Twelve Tables in the Roman or civil right in the same way the Album Praetoris and other inferior courts took it from the Albus. The emperors’ names were written in red in the standards.

Pigmented inks contain other components such as varnish to ensure adhesion of the pigment to the surface and preventing it from removing by the mechanical abrasion effect. These materials are generally resins (in soluble inks) or agglutinant (in water inks).

Pigmented inks have the advantage that when used on paper they remain on the applied surface. This is a desirable feature because the more quantity of ink remains on the paper, the less quantity of ink is needed to get the same colour intensity.

The paper

In the Ancient Egypt people wrote on papyrus (word which the word paper comes from), which was get from the stem of a very abundant plant in the Nile river banks (Cyperus papyrus). In Europe, during the Middle Ages, people used the parchment, consisting on tanned goat or ram skins, which were prepared to get the ink. Unfortunately they were quite expensive, what made, from the 7th century on, that the unwise custom of erasing the texts in the parchments to rewrite on them became popularised (this gave place to the palimpsests) losing this way a great deal of inestimable works.

The Chinese were already making paper from the residues of silk, rice straw and canvas and even from cotton and they transmitted this knowledge to the Arabic, who at the same time took it to what are nowadays Spain and Sicily from the 10th century. The elaboration of paper was spread to France, which produced it using flax from the 12th century.

It was the general use of the shirt in the 14th century what made there were enough cloth or old shirts available to make economic paper and thanks to that, the invention of printers and the cheaper production of paper enabled the appearance of books, not as a curiosity but as an accessible product.

Since then paper has become one of the emblematic products in our culture, made not only from old cloth or cotton but also from a great variety of vegetable fibres; moreover, the growing invention of colorants made possible a generous offer of colours and textures.

Paper can now be substituted by synthetic materials for certain uses, however it still keeps great importance in our life and the daily environment, making a personal article and consequently, difficult to substitute.

The invention of the notebook

The notebook is a small book used to take notes. Itself, it is a small great achievement of humanity, an ally of progress, as this fruit of conjunction between paper and ink has turned on source of information, data store, confidence and feeling register, witness of big events and expression of the highest artistic capacities without overflowing few centimetres from the surface.

It seems to have been invented in 1920 by the Australian Jul Birchall, who was the first one in gathering several papers and joining them to a piece of card, instead of leaving them as a pile of loose sheets. At least, he is the first one to go down in history for this.

Notebooks and inspiration

Artists usually use big notebooks that include wide spaces of blank paper to draw. Lawyers are also known for using some big notebooks that often have lined paper and are appropriate to be used in tables and desks. Horizontal lines in these notebooks can be wider or thinner enabling more or less writing lines. Journalists prefer small notebooks (press notes) to carry them easily and sometimes they use shorthand to take notes. Scientists and other researchers use laboratory notebooks to document their experiments.

All of them have something in common: they are spaces where one can express ideas, take simple witticisms or complicated reflections, short lists or detailed documents; spaces where one can make plastic expressions, sketches, notes, diagrams... in short, images and texts that, together, reflect the feeling or inspiration of a person in a concrete moment.