Page - 183 - in The Vienna Genesis - Material analysis and conservation of a Late Antique illuminated manuscript on purple parchment

Sophie Rabitsch, Antonia Malissa, Katharina Uhlir, Martina Griesser, Christa Hofmann 183 ence inks made from silver ground in a mortar had a crumblier appearance58. After letting the reference inks dry for a few hours, they were burnished with an agate polishing stone, during which process most of the inks tended to smear or started to flake off. Only three inks – ST5, ST7 and ST10 – could be burnished without showing any of these phenom- ena, which is not congruent with Trost’s observations59. While the reference inks mostly had a matt greyish colour before burnishing, those burnished had silvery shiny surfaces (Fig. 29). 58 This could either be due to the mortar itself or the grinding process not being long enough. 59 In her thesis most of the inks are described as easy to write with and being burnishable. Fig. 28: Microscopic images at 12x magnification (scale bar 1 mm) of ink from silver powder obtained a) by grinding silver leaves with gum arabic by hand, ST7_A, b) by grinding silver in a mortar, ST6_A, c) by amalgamation, ST10_A. Fig. 29: Greyish colour of the ink before burnishing (above), and silvery shine after burnishing (below) on sample ST1_A. Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0