Page 917 - Proceedings Collega2023

Experimentation

Stage 1 – preparing the raw ingredients

Take note that Lebai Kassim’s black ink recipe (T1R1) did not specify the making of the basic
ingredients especially the soot, mangosteen charcoal and cashew gum. The lamp black or soot was
collected from the combustion of kerosene oil following the method observed in Cianjur’s ink making
workshop in Indonesia. Another carbon source used in the ink making is the mangosteen charcoal. The
colourant obtained from burnt mangosteen shell was believed to increase the darkness and quality of the
ink produced (Wan Ali, 1988). In fact, according to Shan Zu (n.d), the black dye obtained from mangosteen
originated from Malaya. The mangosteen skins were burnt with coconut coirs to turn them into charcoal.
Coconut coirs have been traditionally used as fire starter in burning activities by the Malays. In this work,
cashew gum exudate was obtained from bark of a cashew nut tree found in the northern part of Peninsular
Malaysia. No botanical details of the cashew nut species were available. The succeeding sections shall
provide the details of each process together with additional facts of the ingredients.

Stage 2 – producing the black ink

Lebai Kassim’s black ink formulation needs first to be quantified using the standard measuring
systems. The soot quantity was stated as 5 cup per 5 litres of water or basically a cup of soot per litre of
formulation. However, what was the cup size remained unknown. Upon estimated using several cup sizes,
the soot quantity was found to be varied from 17 – 22 g / cup. Thus, the soot quantity was chosen as 20 g
/litre of formulation. Next, nothing was mentioned in Lebai Kassim’s formulation on the amount of
mangosteen charcoal used. As such, this work decided to employ the same amount of mangosteen
charcoal as the soot i.e. 20 g / litre of formulation. As for the cashew gum, the fistful amount was estimated
to be around 50 g. In this case, the cashew gum considered was the dried form since it cannot be grounded
in its raw form i.e. as stated in the original recipe. As the amount of raw ingredients obtained were limited
and involved complex processes (particularly the soot, mangosteen charcoal and cashew gum), the
quantity of formulation prepared was reduced to 100 ml. The remaining portions of additives (black
pepper, salt and coconut oil) were not stated in the recipe. Thus, this work adopted the following quantities
for 100ml formulation - 0.5 g of black pepper, 0.1g of salt and 0.5 ml of virgin coconut oil. Therefore the
initial attempt to reproduce Lebai Kassim’s black ink formulation (T1R1) using the standard measuring
systems used the reduced proportions as listed in Table 2.

International Conference on Local Wisdom of the Malay Archipelago (COLLEGA 2023) Page - 904 -