Artist makes ink from clone of Isaac Newton’s apple tree after it blew down in Storm Eunice
An artist has made ink from a clone of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree that was blown down by Storm Eunice in Cambridge last year.The fallen tree was a scion of the original apple tree which was said to have inspired Newton to formulate his theory of gravity by watching an apple fall from it in the 1660s.Planted at Cambridge University’s Botanic Garden in 1954, the clone fell in high winds in February 2022.The botanic garden’s artist-in-residence Nabil Ali has extracted ink from its bark, and used it to create an artwork of 68 apples – to mark the age of the tree before it fell.Newton's original tree, grown in the garden of his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in Lincolnshire, was said to have fallen in a gale in the early half of the 19th century.
Transcript
00:00 but it's a dark golden yellow. I'm calling it Newton's gold.
00:05 I'm the Bill Alley and I'm an artist in residence at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens.
00:10 I'm discovering the natural colours hidden within the garden by making pigments from the plants.
00:17 Recently I made ink from Newton's apple tree and it wasn't the colour that I expected.
00:23 The garden holds a collection of plants from all over the world and it's used for teaching and research.
00:29 It's also a beautiful place for everyone to enjoy and benefit from.
00:33 Over the next year I'll be using the garden's collection of plants to create a dye database.
00:39 It's going to be full of dyes, colours, inks and using plants inspired from 14th and 16th century dye recipes.
00:45 I'll be sharing the results with visitors, researchers, artists throughout the events, performances and a digital colour catalogue.
00:54 Newton's apple tree stood on the lawn in the front of the house in the Botanic Gardens.
00:59 It was grafted from the original apple tree in Lincolnshire Garden.
01:03 Sadly it was blown down during the storm in 2022.
01:08 This is a piece of bark from Newton's apple tree.
01:11 It has been dried, now I'm going to blend it into a fine powder.
01:17 Once it's blended into a fine powder I'm going to cook it for about half an hour to an hour to release the tannin,
01:23 turning bark into dye.
01:26 This is the final result. It's a beautiful colour.
01:30 I thought I'd end up with black, but it's a dark golden yellow.
01:34 I'm calling it Newton's gold.