Glue and Ink

This post relates to the dried and pressed specimens of plants that were sent to London by Anderson and are housed in the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum (NHM). Prior to the original 'Unearthing' project the Anderson specimens had not been catalogued. Thankfully the project funding allowed this to be done as well as their scanning (see here). However, exploring these specimens has caused me to think through issues of glue and ink.

On the whole it seems that Anderson sent his dried and pressed plant specimens unmounted or held onto a sheet of paper with straps that would allow the plant to be examined on both sides; quite a feat as some of his specimens are very delicate. But one was very clearly mounted (glued onto paper) on site. In England on the whole glue in the late-1700s was made from the waste products of fish and animals, including rabbit skin - and there are no rabbits on St Vincent so this can be discounted. This means either fish, or hoof and hide glue was used, or resin from some of the trees growing in the Garden (Gum arabic for instance). I am working with the NHM and an archaeologist at my institution to try and ascertain what the glue was made of.

Ditto the ink that Anderson wrote information about the plant specimens he sent over. Regardless though, I very much doubt that Anderson himself would have made the glue and ink he used. I strongly suspect the glue manufacture would have been a job done by an enslaved African; it would have been a smelly business but a skilled one and as such testifies to the knowledge base of these workers. Making ink too may have been a job for an enslaved worker, using Oak Galls collected from the Garden. I have located an ink recipe from Anderson's chemistry teacher that contains cloves; these were growing in the Garden and it will be fascinating to explore the recipe against the samples of writing available.

You can read more about drying and pressing plants here in a 2022 post. And here you can read about late-eighteenth century glues, plus watch a short video about an experimental archaeology project on glue-making, which includes cheese glue - yes honestly. And here is some further information on historic inks.

Image of Melastomia grandifolia dried and pressed plant specimen collected by Anderson at NHM - note the strapping and an original label as well as the delicacy of the dried flowerss