The Dyer's Guide. Chapter V. On Dyeing Silk And Cotton Black, &c. To dye silk black for velvets, Genoa process, (from Macquer.)

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.
The silk should be ungummed by boiling it four hours with a quarter of its weight of white soap, and after-wards to be well cleared from the soap.

Take, for every hundred pounds of silk, twenty pounds of galls in powder, and boiled one hour; two pounds of sulphate of iron; twelve pounds of iron filings; and twenty pounds of gum arabic or Senegal.

This process is very simple: here are the gallic acid and tannin of the galls, and the iron of the sulphate and the filings. But we must proceed to a more modern process.