Marta Ursescu, Sorin Ciovica, Teodor Malutan, Corina Malutan, Gabriela Lisa: Iron gall inks in Romanian manuscripts: Betewwn recipes and effects.

Despite increased international interest in the subject of iron gall inks corrosion in the recent years, the effect of iron gall inks on Romanian manuscripts remains a scarcely addressed domain.

Along with an art technological source research on medieval Romanian recipes, this study aims at following the changes induced in paper samples treated with six types of reconstructed inks, after accelerated ageing tests.

The examination also includes some 19th century historical documents that give insight into the behaviour of naturally aged papers written using iron gall inks.
The analysis accomplished with some of the most often used instrumental analytical techniques (FTIR, thermogravimetry [TG] , XPS, optical microscopy) allowed us to characterize both paper and iron gall inks, in particular to evaluate by comparison the corrosive effect of different ink formulae.