Black Walnut

Gateway Drug to Natural Colour

David Shrigley: Beta test of early batch of Queen’s Park Black walnut ink

Consider the black walnut. Around this time of year you can find the bright green spheres in the grass, or cracked open and speckled with brown leaving a stain on the sidewalk or in the teeth of some city squirrel racing back to the winter cache. The hulls (that’s the green outer shell) have a spicy-earthy scent like soap and lemon leaf and tobacco and pepper and dry leaves that stays on your hands for minute when you are collecting them, and then stays on your hands as a stain that really sticks around.

Boil up these hulls in water and their natural tannins combine with their natural pigments to form a surprisingly stable ink, textile dye, or even a natural hair dye. The hard shell inside the hull is used industrially as an abrasive cleaner, for water filtration, as filler for stuffed animals, and under astroturf in sports stadiums. Inside the shell (if you can get through it) is the nut-meat which is kind of an intense version of a walnut that pairs well with fine cheeses and honey for some dinner party if those ever happen again. And then there is the wood which makes a beautiful table. But you could probably find all that out from Wikipedia.

For me, the black walnut is something else. It’s a proof of concept. The first and easiest of all the inks that I make, black walnut is non-toxic and infinitely complex in its tones and textures and a kind of democratic botanical pigment that’s found in almost every city in North America and it just gets better as it rots on the ground. I am only ever fighting the squirrels for this resource. My discovery of the black walnut trees in Queen’s park was the beginning of the idea of a sustainable business that has become over the years the thing that I like doing best in the world. It was the first ink that I bottled and labelled and packaged up and sent out to my illustration, design, and art heroes and friends around the world to try out. Right now, and every fall, the black walnuts are falling from the trees and rolling down your street, in the local park, and in your back yard just waiting to be noticed. This is an ink that literally grows on trees.

Photograph by Lauren Kolyn for Make Ink

I briefly went down a rabbit hole of Black Walnut liqueurs and bitters. This one looked particularly promising but I am sure you could make your own.

An early webpage from my online store. While I do send out bulk orders to select stores, the e-commerce part of my business is still in development. I’ve also had some trouble re-sourcing these bottles that I used to get from France. Photography by Rita Leistner

I love the way that black walnut ink layers, especially when you add a bit of shellac.

Good for drawing rabbits. This was from an early print ad that ran in the Paris Review.

Filtering the black walnut ink in my kitchen lab. Photograph by Lauren Kolyn for Make Ink

Long story involving Shawn Micallef and proof that walnut ink looks nice for lettering.

When I first started I sent over a hundred bottles of black walnut ink out to artists and illustrators around the world. Some of them sent me samples back. This one is from master illustrator Christoph Neiman

This one with a bit of fascinating history from Balint Zsako

The late and incomparable Jason Polan always supported my weird entrepreneurialism

A sketch from that first batch of inks that I sent out from sculptor, performance artist and waking dream wrangler Shary Boyle

A brief flirtation with edible stamp ink from an early instagram post

Photograph by Lauren Kolyn for Make Ink