Logwood Writing Inks: History, Production, Forensics, and Use

Abstract In the 16th century, the Spanish brought logwood from Mexico to Europe. Its extract was used for textile dyeing. The French introduced the logwood tree to Western Hispaniola, which became Haiti in 1804. Around 1880, Haiti exported most of its logwood to France. In 1847, Runge introduced the black chrome-logwood ink as an alternative for iron-gall ink, because the latter attacked the steel writing nibs. The most important constituents of logwood are hematoxylin and hematein. Due to the profitable import conditions from Haiti, chrome-logwood ink became the cheapest and most commonly used black writing ink in France. This could explain why Vincent van Gogh, during his French period, used it for writing and drawing and why most of the French postcards from the first half of the 20th century, studied in this publication, were written with chrome-logwood ink, while most of the Dutch postcards were written with an iron gall ink.