lampblack

Lampblack is carbon soot collected from the incomplete combustion of oil, resin, or tar. The name is English: lamp + black, the black residue from a burning lamp. The pigment has been in continuous use for at least 5,000 years. Egyptian scribes used lampblack ink on papyrus. Chinese calligraphers made ink sticks from lampblack bound with animal glue as early as 2500 BCE.

The production method was simple across all cultures. You burned something oily—tallow, linseed oil, pine resin—in an enclosed space and collected the soot that deposited on a cool surface above the flame. In ancient India, lamps were burned inside clay pots with a small hole for oxygen. The soot was scraped from the pot's interior. This is the kajal (kohl) that Indian women have used for centuries.

Chinese ink making elevated lampblack to an art. Song dynasty ink makers (960-1279 CE) developed elaborate recipes involving pine soot, tung oil, musk, and medicinal herbs. The finest ink sticks were aged for decades. A 12th-century treatise by Li Xiaomei listed over forty lampblack recipes, each producing subtly different tones of black.

Lampblack is still manufactured today. It is used in printing inks, rubber compounding, and as a pigment in artist paints. Carbon black—its industrial descendant—is produced at over 10 million tons per year worldwide, primarily as a reinforcing agent in tires. The soot from a candle flame and the rubber in a car tire are, chemically, the same material.