Nabil Ali, "Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Apr 14, 2026

Nabil Ali, a research artist at Cambridge University Botanic Garden who recreates historical recipes for natural inks, paints, and dyes. He talks about seasonal harvesting and medieval workshop practices. He explains practical frameworks for making pigments and demonstrates surprising results like golden ink from Newton’s apple tree and vivid greens and blues from iris.

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INSIGHT

Season And Ripeness Strongly Alter Dye Color

Seasonality matters because plant part and ripeness change dye outcomes, but preservation techniques let makers use off-season material.
Example: unripe buckthorn yields yellow in May–June, ripe berries give green; drying or fixing dye to chalk preserves color year-round.

ADVICE

Preserve Extracts With Alcohol Or Natural Preservatives

Use alcoholic liquids or preservatives to prevent mold when storing organic extracts.
Ali found white wine or high-percent vodka reduces spoilage and grapefruit seed extract fights mold for water-based extracts.

INSIGHT

Framework For Making Color From Plants

Organic color making requires a modular framework of parts, fillers, liquids, preservatives, binders, and additives.
Nabil Ali uses this framework to decide plant part, filler (chalk, eggshell, china clay), liquid (water, wine, alcohol), preservative (grapefruit extract, rosemary) and binder (gum arabic, egg).

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Flowering currant, ivy, Portuguese laurel, and woad might all have grown in a medieval garden, but it would have taken special expertise to extract and create rich blue and purple pigments from them. Humans have been extracting dyes and inks from natural materials for millennia, and the practice was firmly established during the medieval era, recorded in manuscripts that survive today. Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes (Princeton UP, 2026) by Nabil Ali brings together recipes for making natural colors according to season, method, and ingredients.
This unique book takes its title from an ink recipe derived from a descendant of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree, in which ingredients extracted from the bark are transformed, seemingly by magic, from brown to a yellow gold. But gold pigments can also be extracted from cornflower, crocus, greater celandine, myrrh, and turmeric. Ali shares his own accessible adaptations for preparing these and other recipes rooted in medieval craft traditions. Along the way, he provides an engaging and informative natural history of the plants used, alongside the broad spectrum of marvelous colors they produce.
Presenting original translations of medieval recipes taken from painters’ and illuminators’ technical manuscripts from the third century BCE through to the twenty-first century, alongside stunning botanical illustrations, Gold from Newton’s Apple Tree is a captivating celebration of colors derived from nature.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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