A Project in Pigment
It’s a short newsletter this week because we’re in the middle of the Singapore Writers Festival! I (Ruby) attend annually and it’s always the busiest two weeks of my year. The programme is absolutely packed, something you’d understand viscerally if you’ve ever tried using the festival website to plan your schedule, and I spend all the time unfilled by events catching up with other writers. You’ll hear more from me after the festival wraps on Sunday. For now, I want to yap about the programme I was most excited to attend this year: Inkscapes of the Malay World: Unveiling Environmental Perceptions.
The workshop was led by museum docent and Nusantara otaku Hafiz Rashid and botanical ink and paint makers Shirin and Liz from Wild Dot. Hafiz took us through a history of the written word and manuscripts in the Nusantara before Liz showed us some of their attempts to recreate old ink recipes. We got to try making black ink too.
I was actually just talking to my other favourite Nusantara otaku and frequent Mynah contributor Faris Joraimi about the ink on Malay manuscripts before the full festival programme was announced. As a historian of the Malay world, Faris spends a lot of time in the archives. He told me that “our ink was better than European ink.. still looks fresh while the same British documents look faded and decrepit.”
The soot used in old ink recipes was heavily dependent on what was available in the immediate environment. It could be made by burning oil lamps in low-oxygen conditions or found in kitchens—from the blackened bottom of pots or cobwebs that had accumulated oil and other detritus from wood fired cooking. Charcoal sources differed based on what was growing. Some options included mulberry, mangosteen, and rambutan.
Check out Wild Dot’s newsletter to learn more about black ink and their other projects in pigment.
Last week, Karen wrote about how we value print’s utility over its aesthetic qualities here at Mynah. Publishing in print allows us to charge for the magazine. That, in turn, enables us to compensate our amazing contributors for their labour. I do just want to add that I bloody love print though!!!!! I love paper and ink, I love their materiality.
The workshop took place at RJ Paper and we got to meet the legendary Jane who’s been running the company for over 30 years. This was really special for me because we’ve printed Mynah on RJ Paper since the first issue. Printing in Singapore is definitely more expensive than if we outsourced our operations to Malaysia or China. But every time I consider exploring these options, I think about how institutions like RJ are integral to our publishing scene. My big hope is that Mynah’s finances are always doing well enough for us to always keep our business local.
There’s still lots to see at the festival (including my panel on literary criticism this Wednesday), please say hi if you’re around!
Mynah Trivia League Season 1 Round 3 Answers
All of last week’s questions came from what the former executive director of the Singapore Zoo, Bernard Harrison, wrote when Ah Meng passed in 2008. I love pop culture!
Ong Beng Seng asked Harrison if he could close the entire zoo so Michael Jackson could have a private audience with Ah Meng. Harrison said no so MJ and his friend, old Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor, met the ape at the Raffles Hotel. You can watch some of the footage here, it’s quite surreal.
Mynah Trivia League Season 1 Round 4
Here are some fun facts I picked up at the Singapore Writers Festival!
Which historical neighbourhood was home to a thriving printing industry in the mid- to late- 19th-century?
Which novelist worked in Singapore as an ad man before winning the Booker Prize? (His favourite local dish is bak kut teh.)
Singaporean rock star Ramli Sarip was banned from performing on Radio Televisyen Malaysia in the 1990s. What was the reason?
I got the last question from a presentation Fairoz Ahmad gave about his new novel set in 1970s Geylang Serai, Neverness.
(You can also reply this email with your answers!)
As always, submissions close at noon (Singapore time) on Sunday, 17 November.
Mynah Trivia League Season 1 Leaderboard
Bonus Round and Kirat are tied at the top of the leaderboard with five points apiece, while Tenar and C are close behind with four each. The rest of the leaderboard can be found here. Thank you for playing!