BROWNISH BLACK FOR WOOL. (For 1 lb.) Mordant with 3 per cent. Chrome. Dye with 2 oz. Fustic, 2 oz. logwood, 1 oz. madder, and 1 oz. copperas.
BROWN FOR WOOL. Mordant 2½ hours with alum; dye with pine needles (larch) collected in Autumn when they drop.
"BLACK is obtained from the whole plant of Spirea Ulmaria, but especially the root. It is gathered then dried in the sun, and a strong decoction made by boiling for some hours, (a large handful to 3 pints of water). After it has boiled slowly for 2 to 3 hours, stale urine is added to supply the loss by evaporation. Then set aside to cool. The cloth to be dyed, is rubbed strongly with bog iron ore, previously roughened and moistened with water. It is then rolled up and boiled in the decoction. This is of a brilliant black. A fine black is said to have been formerly obtained from the roots of Angelica Sylvestris."—(Edmonstone on the Native Dyes of the Shetland Islands, 1841.) William Morris says;
"[17] Black is best made by dyeing dark blue wool with brown; and walnut is better than iron for the brown part, because the iron-brown is apt to rot the fibre; as you will see in some pieces of old tapestry, or old Persian carpets, where the black is quite perished, or at least in the case of the carpet—gone down to the knots. All intermediate shades of flesh colour can be got by means of weak baths of madder and walnut "saddening;" madder or cochineal mixed with weld gives us orange, and with saddening (walnut) all imaginable shades between yellow and red, including the ambers, maize-colour, etc."
From a Dye Book of 1705.—"Black may be compared to Night and Death, not only because all other colours are deepened and buried in the Black Dye, but that as Death puts an end to all Evils of Life, tis necessary that the Black Dye should remedy the faults of other colours, which have been occasioned by the deficiency of the Dyer or the Dye, or the change of Fashion according to the times and caprice of man."
CHAPTER X.
GREEN
Green results from the mixing of blue and yellow in varying proportions according to the shade of colour required. Berthollet says:—
"Many different plants are capable of affording green colours; such as, the field broom grass, Bromus secalinus; the green berries of the berry bearing alder, Rhamnus frangula; wild chervil, Chærophyllum silvestre; purple clover, Trifolium pratense; common reed, Arundo phragmites; but these colours have no permanence."[18]