Lapis Lazuli Ink

December-March 2024.

Referenced “Il Libro dell’Arte” by Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, 14th century Italian craftsman, translated by Daniel V Thompson, Jr copyright 1933.

Referenced this unnamed artist on Instagram who provided invaluable video instruction.

Purchased high grade Lapis Lazuli stones, seeking stones with the highest amount of blue “meat” or Lazurite.

I bought a refurbished Makita angle grinder and we used the motor to build a powerful table-top rock crusher; my Dad had to machine special parts out of steel which were used to grind the stones-it took 2+ hours to crush 10 quarter-sized stones to powder. That rock is extremely durable!

Next step was sifting the 12 oz of ground powder to ideally less than 40 microns. I used 3 sifters: I poured the powder through the old flour sifter. Anything that remained I ground finer using alternatively a coffee grinder and a mortar and pestle. Next I used a #100 scientific sifter, doing the same process of regrinding and sifting. Next I used a #325 sifter to get an even finer grade. After around 20+ hours with the help of friends, I decided that about somewhere between >40-70 microns was good enough!

Used a large magnet to run over the fine powder to remove as much iron filaments as I could-took about 3 hours.

Melted 6 oz beeswax and 3 oz Rosin together in a double boiler.

Stirred in the Lapis powder and it made a gooey hot mess which I then dumped into a silicon mat. It smelled nasty while cooking due to the high sulfuric content present in the lazurite. Opened the windows to ventilate the room, could also be done over and outdoor cooking fire.

After the mixture cooled a bit, I coated my hands in linseed oil and kneaded this stinky dough to form small balls which then were set out to dry in an aluminum pan for three days.

I then boiled some distilled water and cooked the lapis dough balls (Cennini’s translator refers to these as “the plastic.”)

The dough balls immediately disintegrated as they boiled. I set the pan outside to cool and after 4-5 hours it had a waxy surface of impurities that I scraped off and discarded.

I separated the gray wax/resin that stuck to the bottom of the pan from the gray/blue water which contained the bright blue ultramarine particles. By pouring and allowing to settle, washing with distilled water and hand siphoning using a tiny dropper, I could separate bright blue from remaining visible impurities. This took about 6-8 hours.

I was left with 3 grades of Lapis: The best blue I could get was Grade I, the next best, with some impurities making it a deeper slate color was Grade II, the final was essentially Lapis Ash (the remains after filtering) and this is Grade III.

I mulled each gently and briefly with a gum Arabic solution and bottled accordingly.

Hats off to Cennini and those folks who had to do this for a living.