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

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.
This colour is composed of blue and yellow. It is with difficulty produced on silk, because the blue vat is liable to spot and give a party colour, an inconvenience to which green is more liable than blue, and more perceptible. The boiling of silk for greens is the same as for common colours.

The silk being alumed as usual rather strongly, is washed off and divided on the sticks into small hanks of about four or five ounces, that it may be equally and easily managed in the working, from the yellow to green, in the blueing from the blue vat.

Weld is then boiled as stated in the article concerning yellow; when boiled, a liquor of it is prepared strong enough to give a lemon ground; the silk is then turned with all the expedition, care, and caution possible, that it may be even. When it appears full enough, some of the threads are to be separated and dipped in the vat, to determine this. If not full enough, more of the weld liquor must be added to the dye bath, and the silk returned and tried again, and so on; when the colour is right, the silk is washed off and beetled. It is then wrung and formed into hanks, and dipped skein by skein in the blue vat, the same as the blue and the purple should be; it must be wrung with equal care and dispatch.

This green is a kind of sea-green, of which there are upwards of twenty shades. The lighter shades, when taken out of the vat, are not washed but the silk must be worked in the hands by clapping it between them, and then be carefully opened and aired. A few threads are then washed, or rinsed; if the colour be right the whole is washed.

For the dark shades, when the weld is exhausted a little logwood is added to the liquor; in some cases, old fustic, in some annatto.

For very dark-wing or bottle-green shades, a little sulphate of iron is required.