Ink From Inkcaps
(Above) Common Inkcaps, Coprinopsis atramentaria.
When reading Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’, I was fascinated by the illustrations in the book. They’re made by illustrator Collin Elder, created with ink made from shaggy inkcaps, Coprinus comatus. I was inspired to make ink of my own as I had seen lots of inkcaps popping up around my home village as it’s the perfect time for them, and I thought I’d give it a go!
The process was simple: find a load of mushrooms, collect them, bring them home, smash them up and squeeze them out to extract the ink.
I used a combination of both shaggy inkcaps and common inkcaps (Coprinus comatus and Coprinopsis atramentaria) as there weren’t enough to use either one exclusively, something I do regret as I now know common inkcaps hold a huge concentration of water. It’s best to use the inkcaps that have matured and are turning black; you’ll know they’re good to use when the caps slowly roll upwards (a few days after sprouting) and the gills are black (see photo at top of post!)
After collecting the mushrooms, I took them home and used a mortar and pestle to grind up the shrooms into a sort of paste (this isn’t actually neccessary - you can skip this) before putting the paste into a cheese cloth. Lots of squeezing and ink going everywhere and I was able to make a small jar’s worth of ink. I gave this a go on some paper and it was mostly just like washed out black watercolour (but with a strong mushy smell!)
I came back to the ink a couple of days later and had found the mushroom water had seperated from the black pigment so I set out to find a way to remove the water from the top. In the end, I used a pipette to remove the mushroom water from the top and just leave the pigment.
The end jar wasn’t very much ink by the end of the process so I made another jar’s worth the following week, which produced a similar amount of pigment. I added them both together and got a full jar of ink!
Using this ink was very similar to normal ink except it smelt very strongly and easily rubbed away when dry. I enjoyed using this ink when it came to documenting everything I’ve foraged since Sep 22; it works really well when using a dip pen paired with watercolours!
I would love to explore this process of extracting ink from other mushrooms or plants more in the future. I’m thinking flowers could work really well to get bright pigments, although I would need a considerable amount of them to make enough ink.
