The Dyer's Guide / Being a compendium of the art of dyeing linen, cotton, silk, wool, muslin, dresses, furniture, &c. &c.; with the method of scouring wool, bleaching cotton, &c., and directions for ungumming silk, and for whitening and sulphuring silk and wool; and also an introductory epitome of the leading facts in chemistry, as connected with the art of dyeing

by Thomas Packer

On dyeing cotton BLACK at Rouen, (from D'Apligny.)

Take one hundred quarts of sour wine, bad vinegar, or small beer; put to either of these twenty-five pounds of old iron hoops rusted by the air or dew; twelve pounds of rye meal or coarse bran; put the whole into a copper and heat it rather more than blood warm. In the summer it would do exposed to the sun and air with a porous cloth over it, to let in the air, but keep out dirt, &c.; the older this solution is the better; but it should be at least two months old.

Cotton skeins are galled by being worked in a solution of galls; alumed and then dyed in weld liquor; this in the result is yellow; they are then passed through a decoction of logwood, and after that of sulphate of iron, a quarter of a pound to every pound of cotton; they are then dyed in madder, half a pound to every pound of cotton.

We cannot recommend this process, although we give it, as much better methods are now known.