The Dyer's Guide. Chapter III. On Dyeing Silk. To Dye Silk lilac. Another process for lilac. Another process for dyeing muslin, &c. lilac.

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 Inttroductory Epitome of The Leading Facts in Chemistry, As Connected With The Art of Dyeing.

By Thomas Packer,
Dyer and Practical Chemist.

"Cet arte est un des plus utiles et des plus merveilleux qu'on connoisse."
- Chaptal.

"There is no art which depends so much on chemistry as dyeing."
- Garnett.

Second Edition,
Corrected and Materially Improved.

London:
Printed for Sherwood, Gilbert, And Piper,
Paternoster-Row.
1830.
To Dye Silk Lilac.
Lilac is and should be a bright light shade of violet or purple; to give it the blue requires great management. The vats being generally too strong, it is best to mix a little of the new rich vat with some pearl-ash in clean cold water, and so prepare a liquor on purpose, by which the lilacs may be blued or reddened at pleasure. When this liquor is first mixed it becomes of a green colour; the silks therefore should not be dipped till the liquor begins to lose its green colour and inclines to blue. Pearl-ash added to this liquor helps to blue the archil, because the effect of the alkali upon red is to render it violet.

Another process for lilac
Consists in simply using the chemical blue with archil according to the shade required.

Another process for dyeing muslin, &c. lilac.
This is accomplished by mixing the neutralized chemic blue for cotton with the pink dye of safflower, according to the shade required.