Heritage formulations — iron gall, walnut hull, lampblack — mixed in small batches for those who still write things down.
Ink is one of the oldest tools on the writing desk, and one of the least changed. The recipe for iron gall — galla, vitriolum, gummi — appears in Western manuscripts from the 12th century and was still mixed by clerks into the 20th. We make those inks, by hand, the way they were made: green Aleppo oak galls from Themazi in Turkey, carbon pigment from Kremer Pigmente in Bavaria — the pigment used in fine-art conservation — and black walnut hulls gathered each October from partner trees here in the Piedmont.
Everything else is mixing — slowly, in small batches — then bottling in apothecary glass, sealing each cap with poured wax, and numbering the labels by hand. We name our suppliers. We publish our test cards. We tell you what's in the bottle.
Deep blue-black that browns toward purple as it ages. Mildly acidic — bites into the paper and stays for centuries. The ink of contracts, parchments, and old Bibles.
Warm sepia, the color of letters left in a desk drawer. Made from black walnut hulls foraged here in October. Gentle on nibs. Every page reads a little different.
A true, opaque black — no shading, no shimmer, no apology. Carbon pigment suspended in gum arabic. The ink of Asian calligraphy traditions, and for anything you want still legible in 2125.
Every Oak Gall batch is read on a calibrated meter at day two. Outside 2.1–2.6, it doesn't ship — it gets corrected or discarded.
Decanted off the sediment, then run through a 5-micron filter so nothing reaches your feed that shouldn't. The difference between our ink and unfiltered dip-pen iron gall.
Tested in a Pilot Metropolitan, a TWSBI Eco, and a vintage Esterbrook before anything goes public — then we publish the card.
We're pre-launch: the formulas are set, the bench is stocked, and the first bottles are being mixed now. Leave an address and we'll write once — when Oak Gall is bottled, sealed, and ready to post. No noise in between.
We send a few letters a year and nothing else. The Notebook, the new batches, the occasional one-off.