The Dyer's Guide. Chapter VI. On Dyeing Cotton And Silk. On dyeing silk grey.

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.
All the greys, namely, nut-greys, thorn-greys, black and iron-greys, and others of the same hue, black-grey excepted, are produced without aluming. The silk being washed from the soap and drained on the peg, a liquor is made of fustic, archil, logwood and sulphate of iron: fustic gives the ground, archil the red, logwood darkens, and the sulphate of iron softens all these colours, turns them grey, and, at the same time, serves instead of alum as a mordant.

As there is an infinite variety of greys, without any positive names, produced by the same methods, it would be endless to enter into details, which would prolong this treatise to little purpose.

For reddish-grey the archil should predominate; for those more grey, the logwood; and for those rather greenish, the fustic.

Care should be taken not to use the logwood too much, as with the sulphate of iron it darkens more than most drugs: therefore the black vat, made either with alderbark, or the other preparation mentioned in dyeing cotton, is preferable to the sulphate of iron.