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 the Component Parts of Vegetable and Animal substances.

In order more correctly to understand the theory and practice of dyeing, it is essential that the pupil should become acquainted with the nature of the substances upon which and with which he must necessarily operate. We shall not enter into the theories of light and of colours, as propounded by Sir Isaac Newton, as well as many illustrious chemists, who have already done so much for the art of dyeing, but shall simply refer to such writers as Ure, Bancroft, Berthollet, Brande, &c. from whom may be learnt what is of most importance to be known concerning this curious subject.

We may just add, however, in regard to light, that Sir Isaac Newton proved it consists of rays differing from each other in their relative refrangibilities. By causing light to pass through a hole in a window-shutter into a darkened room, and receiving that light on a glass prism, the rays, in passing through the prism, not only became refracted, that is, thrown out, of the rectilinear direction, but also separated into seven distinct colours, namely, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The red being the least refracted and violet the most. If these prismatic, or primary colours, as they are usually called, be divided into 360 equal parts, the red rays will occupy 45 of these parts, the orange 27, the yellow 48, the green 60, the blue 60, the indigo 40, and the violet 80, and, what is very remarkable, these colours, when mixed in the proportions here set down, produce white. This may be readily proved by mixing seven powders of the colours and quantity mentioned, or by painting a wheel with the same proportions of the different colours and making it revolve rapidly. But it should be noted, that, in either case, the white will not be so pure and delicate, as that produced by the mixture of the rays of light. Upon these phenomena is founded the Newtonian theory of colours. Thus green bodies reflect the green rays and absorb the others. All the rays are reflected by white bodies, and absorbed by those which are black.

It is, notwithstanding, highly necessary that the learner should know that portion of modern chemistry which will lead him to the best secrets of his art, and hence assure him of that which was only before conjecture. And it cannot be sufficiently impressed upon him, that if our theory be not true, we work from wrong data; we may, it is true, approach the truth; be right in some things and wrong in others, and our uncertainty and mistakes will be accordingly; yet the most complete dyer must be he, who with extensive practice combines a knowledge of the true principles of his art, to which modern chemistry is, doubtless, the key.

It is scarcely necessary to insist further on the importance of a knowledge of the constituent parts of vegetable and animal bodies, as well as those inorganic substances with which chemistry has so largely to deal; but it will be seen, in the course of our subsequent observations, what difficulty there is in dyeing cotton of a red colour, similar to that produced by cochineal on wool; how, in dyeing cotton yarn an Adrianople red, the intestinal liquor of the sheep, and the dung and the blood of the same animal are used, and have been found so important by the dyers of Asia; hence the colour is called the Adrianople or Turkey red.

It is found by experience, and particularly in hot climates, that substances containing ammonia (volatile alkali) quite developed, have the property of raising and rendering more intense the red colours. It has been found, too, that the bones of animals retain the colour of madder very strongly, when they have been given that colouring material; and the vivacity of the colour has been attributed in such cases, it is presumed with truth, to the ammonia which the bones contain.

There are, therefore, in regard to vegetables in particular, some things, the nature and properties of which it is absolutely necessary that the dyer should understand: for want of a knowledge of one of them, it is a fact that losses are very often sustained to a serious amount. It may seem surprising, but the author has not seen in any writer on dyeing or chemistry, a proper method of working the pastil or woad vat; nor how to renew and work it down, again and again, with an assurance that it will be neither decomposed nor spoiled; and which, for want of a proper knowledge, it has often been. We shall therefore endeavour to give some directions by which those fatal and expensive disasters may be avoided.

Although, at first sight, it seems easy to distinguish the three kingdoms of nature from each other, yet there is such an imperceptible transition from one to the other, that it will be difficult to give such a definition as shall embrace all the individuals of each, and, at the same time, exclude those of the other kingdoms. On examination, indeed, we do find that there is in fact no natural distinction of this kind; and that there is scarcely a function common to vegetables and minerals which some of the animal tribe do not enjoy, and vice versâ. Yet it must, however, be noted, that most animals have the power of voluntary loco-motion, and are thus rendered peculiarly different from all other bodies which we find upon or in the earth.

The substances constituting vegetable differ from those constituting mineral bodies, in their being of a more complex kind; and though vegetables are extremely susceptible of decomposition in various ways, not one can be, by any art, synthetically produced. Yet, although what are called by chemists the proximate constituents of vegetables are numerous, such are water, starch, sugar, gum, gluten, wax, oil, camphor, resins, colouring matter, extractive matter, several acids, &c. &c. all of which are capable of being decomposed, the ultimate constituents of vegetables are very few; the chief are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; some afford nitrogen; in some are traces of sulphur, potassa, lime, soda, magnesia, silica, &c.; in nearly all vegetables are traces of iron; in many manganese.

As the ultimate principles of vegetables are chiefly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, it will be useful to inquire how vegetables obtain these materials. Water, which is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, is a ready source whence both its constituents may be obtained; and it is concluded that it is decomposed in the glands of vegetables, assisted by solar light, and becomes fixed in them in the state of oil, extract, mucilage, &c. The greatest part, however, of vegetables consists of carbon, or, to make ourselves more intelligible, pure charcoal; the carbon, notwithstanding its solidity in the shape of charcoal, most readily combines with oxygen, and hence it forms, as carbonic acid, a small portion of atmospheric air, from which source the carbon of plants is in part at least derived. Another source from which plants derive their carbon is the earth, and decaying vegetable matters; the dung of animals supplies also some of the constituents of vegetables. Indeed, in the application of dung and other matters, so as to promote the healthy and vigorous growth of vegetables, does the science of agriculture chiefly consist. It appears, however, that nourishment is received principally, if not entirely, by plants in a liquid or gaseous form. It should be noticed too, that few, if any, healthy vegetables will grow any where except in light, a powerful stimulant at all times, not only to plants but to animals; such are its effects, that many dyes in cloth are materially altered, nay, sometimes destroyed by it.

Animal substances thus differ from vegetables: they afford a considerable quantity of ammonia, (which is, it is now known, a compound body consisting of hydrogen and nitrogen), and very fetid products, either by the action of fire, or by the putrid fermentation. They also putrify more readily and speedily than vegetables, and give out a very disagreeable smell. They also contain a considerable quantity of nitrogen, the presence of which constitutes the most striking peculiarity of animal compared with vegetable bodies; but as some vegetables contain nitrogen, so there are certain animal principles into the composition of which nitrogen does not enter. The chief ultimate principles then of animal matter are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; but phosphorus and sulphur are also often contained in it. Lime also exists in animal bones and shells in considerable quantity, usually, however, in combination with the phosphoric and the carbonic acid. The chief proximate principles of animal matter are blood, albumen, gelatine, colouring matter, milk, bile, lymph, urine, skin, muscle, horn, hair, fat, cerebral substance, shell, and bone, &c.

The differences between vegetable and animal bodies appear to depend upon animal matter containing nitrogen in much greater abundance than it is found in vegetables; and hence the decomposition of animal matter by destructive distillation is characterized by the presence of ammonia, which is formed by the union of the hydrogen with the nitrogen; and it is sometimes so abundantly generated as to be the leading product: thus when horns, hoofs, or bones are distilled by themselves, a quantity of solid carbonate of ammonia and of the same substance combined with a fœtid oil, and dissolved in water, are obtained. Hence the preparations called salt and spirit of hartshorn and animal oil.

The principal animal fluids are blood, milk, and bile. The blood, soon after it is taken from the living animal, separates into two parts, one called the crassamentum, which is red, and the other serum, which is a fluid, and of a pale straw-colour; the crassamentum is a more firm and consistent mass than the serum, by which it is usually, when cool, surrounded. Milk consists of serum or whey, butter, which while floating on the milk is called cream, and curd or cheese, which has the leading properties of coagulated albumen. The bile, as has been before stated, is a saponaceous fluid consisting chiefly of albumen, soda, a bitter resin, water, and some other saline matter. Fat, in the dead animal, is merely animal oil in a concrete or hardened state.

The principal animal solids besides bone, are albumen, gelatine, and fibrin. These substances, in certain states of concretion and combination, form all the solids of animals, and are separable from each other by easy analysis.

By whatever means we deprive animal substances of their nitrogen, we reduce them to a state similar to that of vegetables. The muscular fibre, or flesh as it is usually called, when excluded from the air, but particularly if in contact with water, parts with its nitrogen, and is converted into a substance resembling spermaceti, which in its analysis agrees with vegetable expressed oil.

When vegetables and animals are deprived of life, their various parts, and especially their fluids, sooner or later, spontaneously assume processes which terminate in their total decomposition. The earlier stages which lead to their decomposition are termed fermentation. Of this there are three kinds; the first, or vinous fermentation, takes place in vegetable juices which contain a considerable quantity of sugar, such are the juices of the grape forming wine, of the apple forming cyder, &c. In this fermentation a considerable quantity of carbonic acid gas is disengaged; this gas is very destructive to animal life, no one can live for a minute in it. If, after the vinous fermentation is completed, the liquor be exposed for some time to atmospheric air, another fermentation takes place, oxygen is absorbed, and the liquor becomes vinegar, hence called the acetous fermentation. The putrid fermentation generally takes place in animal bodies very soon after death, so that neither of the other processes, certainly not the vinous, the acetous rarely, becomes a condition of animal matter.

The chief product of the vinous fermentation is an intoxicating, colourless, volatile, and highly inflammable liquor called alcohol; in common language rectified spirits of wine. It may be obtained by distillation from wine, cyder, perry, brandy, &c. &c.; and from whatever liquor it be obtained, when freed from extraneous matter, it is in every case the same. Alcohol consists of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Its usual specific gravity is 825, water being 1000.

After vegetables have passed through these fermenting processes, the decomposition continuing, unless checked by extraneous means, the remainder of their constituents become separated, many of them being volatilized in the form of gas, and nothing remains but a black or brown residuum called mould, consisting of carbon, some salts, a little oil, and extractive matter.

In the decomposition of animal substances, we perceive the union of hydrogen and nitrogen forming ammonia; the combination of carbon with oxygen produces carbonic acid; and nitric acid arises from the union oxygen and nitrogen. A quantity of hydrogen is also extricated in the form of gas, carrying off with it sulphur and phosphorus, which produce together the disagreeable smell arising from animal putrefaction. Nothing now remains but a portion of carbon mixed with phosphate of soda and phosphate of lime.

Hence we see that, by the processes of fermentation, complex bodies are converted into more simple substances, and that nature restores, in the new combinations, the principles which she had borrowed from the atmosphere for the formation of both animals and vegetables; and that she accomplishes a perpetual circle of ever-changing being, at once demonstrating the fecundity of her resources, and the grandeur and simplicity of her operations.

On substantive and adjective colours, and the mordants, &c. used in dyeing; and on the leading facts of chemical science as connected with this art.

The substances commonly dyed are either animal, as wool, silk, hair, leather, and skins of all kinds; or vegetable, as cotton, flax, hemp, &c. Great differences exist between the affinities for colouring matter possessed by these substances, so that a process which perfectly succeeds in dyeing wool may fail when applied to cotton. Wool has generally the strongest affinity for colour; silk and other animal substances come next; cotton next, and hemp and flax last.

Of the numerous known dyes, few can be applied to either animal or vegetable fibre without some preparation beyond that of cleansing the stuff, and immersing it in the dyeing liquor. When colours can be fixed on cloth without any previous preparation, they are called substantive colours, such is indigo; when they cannot be so fixed, but require to be saturated with some preparation, such as acetate of alumina, or a metallic oxide, &c. they are called adjective colours; of this kind are madder, cochineal, &c. The substances with which cloths are impregnated, previously to being dyed, are called mordants, because they are supposed to bite or lay hold of the colour which is applied.

The chief difference between vegetable and animal substances is, that animal (as for instance wool) contains a small portion of carbon, and a large quantity of hydrogen and nitrogen; while vegetables contain a very large proportion of carbon, less hydrogen, and, in general, no nitrogen.

It is the interest of every dyer to acquire as much information as possible concerning the nature of alum, iron, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, the alkalies, acids, &c. in order to prevent or obviate the consequences of an incorrect application of these agents in the various departments of his art, and also to apply them with the greatest success. We shall, therefore, enter a little into the nature and combinations of some of these bodies, and state some of the leading facts with which the modern discoveries in chemistry have made us acquainted.

Carbon, or charcoal, is considered an elementary body, because, as yet, no means have been found adequate to decompose it; it forms the skeleton of vegetables or their woody fibre.

We must now direct the attention of the reader to oxygen gas, the discovery of which was made by Dr. Priestley in the year 1774, and by him called dephlogisticated air; the most important discovery that was, perhaps, ever made in chemistry. When a metal is exposed to atmospheric air, at almost every temperature, it loses its metallic lustre, and acquires the form and appearance of an earthy substance. If this change be produced in a given quantity of air, the oxidation can only be carried on to a certain degree; and on examining the air which remains, we shall find that it has lost the whole of its oxygen, and that nothing remains but nitrogen gas. What was formerly called the calcination of metals is nothing but the process of their union with oxygen, which is now therefore properly called their oxidation.

If charcoal be mixed with the metallic oxide, and a suitable heat be applied to the mixture, it will unite with the oxygen and form carbonic acid, which will fly off in the form of gas, while the metal will assume its metallic form. From this we learn that oxygen is a part of atmospheric air, and that nitrogen constitutes another portion of the same air. Ammonia is a combination of nitrogen and hydrogen. Combustion, or the burning of any combustible body, cannot take place, at least under ordinary circumstances, without the presence of oxygen. Nitrogen gas, (called by its discoverers azotic gas), constitutes about three fourths of atmospheric air; the other fourth consists of oxygen, besides a small fraction of carbonic acid gas. Oxygen decomposes and destroys all fugitive colours. Oxygen is, besides, the basis of almost all the acids, and hence is one of the most universal agents in nature.

Hydrogen, formerly called inflammable air, was discovered by Mr. Cavendish in 1767; it is called hydrogen, because it is one of the component parts of water; or, more properly, it is the base of water. It is obtained in the most pure state from the decomposition of water by means of metals, thus: pass one hundred parts of water through a red hot iron tube, a gun barrel for instance, fifteen parts of hydrogen gas will be produced, while the inside of the tube will be found converted into an oxide, and to have gained eighty five parts in weight.

Again, when eighty five parts of oxygen gas are burned with fifteen of hydrogen gas, both gases vanish, and one hundred parts of water are the result. Hydrogen gas, when in a pure state, is about fifteen times lighter than atmospheric air; hence its use for inflating balloons. Hydrogen, if inhaled, destroys animal life; combined with nitrogen, it forms ammonia, or the volatile alkali, as we have before stated.

We have mentioned the fixed alkalies in a preceding section. We may add here, that by the discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy, in the year 1807, the base of caustic, or pure potash, is now known to consist of a light, white metallic substance, to which the name of potassium has been given; it is of the consistence of soft wax; at a freezing temperature it is hard, brittle, and solid; when thrown upon water it instantly takes fire, hydrogen gas escapes, and an oxide of potassium, or caustic pot-ash, is produced. The potash and pearl-ash of the shops we must not forget, are combinations of carbonic acid and pot-ash, hence they effervesce with all the acids; but caustic pot-ash, containing no carbonic acid, combines with any of the acids without effervescence.

The SODA, as obtained from barilla, is a carbonate of soda; pure soda, or caustic soda, was, till the discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy, supposed to be, as well as potash, a simple substance. It is now, however, known to consist of a metallic substance of the colour of lead, but, nevertheless, lighter than water; upon which, when thrown, it produces, like potassium, violent action, yet does not, in general, like potassium, inflame. It is called sodium; pure soda consists therefore of sodium and oxygen, hence it is an oxide of sodium. These discoveries of the composition of the fixed alkalies are of infinite importance in the arts. The alkalies contain some very striking properties:

Their taste is acrid, burning and urinous. They generally change the blue colours of vegetable infusions green. When mixed with silex or flint, by exposure to great heat they form glass, and they render oils miscible with water, and hence combine with them forming soaps. They effervesce (when combined with carbonic acid,) with many other acids, and form neutral salts with all the acids. The volatile alkali or ammonia, on exposure to air, flies entirely away. Pot-ash, either in its caustic state, or in that of a carbonate, absorbs moisture from the air, and liquifies. While soda, on the contrary, and many of its combinations, effloresce in the air; they, nevertheless, effervesce, and combine with the acids in a similar way to pot-ash.

We have mentioned how pot-ash is obtained in a preceding section. Soda is commonly procured from the ashes of marine plants; the barilla of commerce is obtained, it is said, in Spain, chiefly from many species of the salsola, or salt-wort. Barilla is an impure subcarbonate of soda, it is used largely in the manufacture of soap.

We now proceed to notice the nature of acids.

They excite a particular sensation on the palate, which we call sour. They change the blue colour of vegetables red. All of them, except the carbonic acid, effervesce with the volatile as well as the fixed alkalies when in the state of carbonates, as they are most commonly found in commerce. Oxygen is the principle of almost all acids; their difference depends upon the base combined with the oxygen: thus oxygen combined with carbon or pure charcoal, forms carbonic acid; with nitrogen the nitric acid; with sulphur the sulphuric acid, &c. &c.

Gas is a term implying the same as air; but as the term air, when used, is liable to be misunderstood for the air of the atmosphere, which is, as we have seen, a compound body, the term gas is more appropriately applied to all elastic fluids of a specific kind. Thus we say carbonic acid gas, oxygenous gas. The difference between carbonic acid and carbonic acid gas, and oxygen and oxygenous gas, consists in the latter being combined with heat only, and in the state of air, while in the former they are fixed in some body, as in carbonate of pot-ash and oxide of lead, in both which cases the carbonic acid exists in a fixed state, or combined with the pot-ash, and the oxygen is in a fixed state, or combined with the lead.

We may now treat of carbonic acid gas, which is thus produced, as well as in many other ways: when charcoal is burned in oxygen gas, exactly sufficient for its combustion, both the charcoal and oxygen disappear, and an elastic fluid is found in the vessel, which is equal in weight to both. This air or gas is carbonic acid gas; it combines with lime, the alkalies, and pure or burnt magnesia: it constitutes a considerable portion of the weight of chalk, limestone and marble, as is readily seen by comparing these bodies before and after their conversion into quicklime. It is frequently combined with hydrogen. The gas with which the streets are now lighted is chiefly carburetted hydrogen.

Carbonic acid gas has the following properties. It extinguishes flame, and, like nitrogen and hydrogen, kills animals immersed in it. It is heavier than common air, and may therefore be poured out of one vessel into another like water. Cider, wine, beer and other fermented liquors owe their briskness to the carbonic acid which they contain; soda-water also owes its briskness entirely to the quantity of carbonic acid gas which it contains, a small quantity of heat being sufficient to give the acid the gaseous state.

Sulphur has been mentioned before; it is well known to be a very combustible substance; it is found in great quantities throughout nature; the sulphur of commerce comes either from Italy or Sicily; or from the isle of Anglesea, where it is obtained from the smelting of sulphuret of copper; the best, however, comes from Sicily. It is, sometimes, found pure; but often combined with some of the metals, forming sulphurets. It is also frequently obtained by the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances; it is sometimes found combined with hydrogen (hence called sulphuretted hydrogen), in the human stomach, more frequently in the intestines. Sulphur combined with a small dose of oxygen, forms a volatile suffocating acid, called the sulphureous acid; with a large dose it forms sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol.

For the nitric and muriatic acids, see a preceding section. We may, however, mention here, that nitric acid has the peculiar property of staining the scarf skin of the human body a dull yellow, of such permanence, that it can scarcely, by any means, be destroyed, it usually remaining till the skin wears or peels off.

The principal vegetable acids are the tartaric and the acetic. The tartaric acid exists in superabundance in tartar, and particularly in cream of tartar, which is nothing more than a purified tartar. See argol in a preceding section.

The acetic acid constitutes the vinegar both common and distilled; it is found in a very concentrated state in the shops, under the name of aromatic vinegar. It is also now obtained in large quantities, and of great strength from wood by distillation, or burning, in vessels, adapted for the purpose, hence called the pyrolignous acid, but essentially the acetic acid. This last is now used by Calico-Printers to make acetate of iron. See a preceding section.

Alumina, or earth of alumina, sometimes called argil, is soft to the touch, adheres to the tongue, and hardens in the fire, contracting its dimensions: it constitutes the greatest part of clays. With sulphuric acid and pot-ash, it forms the common alum of the shops. Alum dissolves in about sixteen times its weight of cold water. For acetate of alum see alum in a preceding section.

Agriculturists and agricultural chemists know that alumina constitutes three eighths or more of a fruitful soil; some vegetables, likewise, contain this earth in their composition. Iron is also a component part of many soils, particularly those in which a red colour is predominant; hence it is, probably, a component part of all drugs used for browns, fawns, and blacks. It will be seen what affinity cotton has for iron in the dye of buff[4] upon cotton; and it seems reasonable to conclude that this metal not only produces the black, grey, and brown hues, but, with lime, forms a component part of the drugs themselves which give the brown dyes. It may be here also mentioned, that the red colour of the blood has been by many chemists supposed to arise from the iron which it contains; Mr. Brande, however, does not, from his own experiments, conclude this to be the fact. The blood of animals is, nevertheless, occasionally used for dyeing, as will be seen under Adrianople red. See Kirwan on Manures, &c. and Davy's Agricultural Chemistry.

From the acids or oxygen combined with alkalies, earths, or metals, almost innumerable mordants, as we have seen, are formed; and upon the correct and proper application of these to the cloth or other matters to be dyed, depends the goodness and permanence of the colours. The dyer cannot, therefore, be too scrupulously attentive to this portion of his art.

In dyeing the student ought also to remember, that the material to be dyed combines intimately, in numerous instances, with alumina or other mordants; in the case of alumina it, in some instances, takes up from one twelfth to one fourth of its weight of alum, leaving the alum bath nearly tasteless. So also will rich extract of American bark, or even weld, when the proportion of weld is in weight more than two to one of the wool, form a triple compound with the cloth and alum, of permanent duration.

All these preliminaries the author considers of the first importance to be understood, and he has, therefore, mentioned them again and again. For so doing he is sure that he shall be excused in the dye-house, although not perhaps by the critics, whose candour he nevertheless respectfully solicits.

We now proceed to the application of mordants. In regard to muslins and calicoes, the alum is to be mixed with gum and carried to the piece, as will be described below in the Calico-Printers' mordant, and then immersed in the dye-bath: it thus receives the base or mordant. If the base be alum and the dye-bath madder, then, where the block strikes the pattern with the alumine base, the colour will come out red; the other parts will clean and bleach white. If alum and iron form the base, the colour will be purple; if iron alone be applied, and galls, sumach, logwood, &c. are the component parts of the dye-bath, then it will be black.