01 . 23

buckthorn pinke : january ’23

This month’s pigment, Buckthorn Pinke, is presented to you with an invitation to explore it in two different forms: as an ink and as a lake pigment. The packet contains two ‘clothlets,’ a vehicle for ink transport used by medieval monks, wherein a small cloth is saturated in a concentrated ink and dried. The packet also contains two white powders: alum & soda ash, both of which come from large mines. Alum is sometimes used to make pickles, and soda ash is a form of baking soda. The powders can be used to transform the dark brown of the buckthorn ink clothlets into a bright, luminous lemon yellow.

The Buckthorn ink is made with Common Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), which was introduced to this large continent in the 1800s. These days the plant is disliked by humans because it spreads rapidly and crowds out botanical biodiversity. Its berries cause diarrhea in humans and birds, so it’s considered ‘mildly poisonous’ (do not eat!). Tilke picked these berries on the side of a dirt road in Vermont where she learned to ride a bike as a kid.

Buckthorn berries (Rhamnus saxatilis) were used historically in Europe to make a yellow color, also known as ‘still de grain yellow’ or ‘dutch pinke,’ at a time when the term ‘pinke’ referred to its method of manufacture and not its color (there were brown, yellow and pink pinkes). The berries themselves contain an array of hidden colors which respond to changes in ph. The berry juice in these clothlets started out deep purple, then turned dark green, then warm russet, and, when laked, will be yellow.

contributor: Tilke Elkins

Tilke Elkins founded Wild Pigment Project in 2019 to foster conversations about the relationships between people and the places they collaborate with. The project raised nearly 40K in funding and had following of 50K on Instagram. Tilke Elkins is an artist whose current site-specific paintings exist in cycles of reciprocity with places.