Color of the Day - Black and Dyers Black

Black , 1775 – abfence or want of light and colour, owing to a body’s reflecting no rays of light. Dyers black, for ftuffs of a high price, is compofed of indigo, woad, boiled with alum, tarter or afhes of lees or wine, maddered with common madder, and mixed with gall-nuts of Aleppo, copperas and fumach. The beft black cloth fhould be firft dyed blue.
Royal English Dictionary, 1775

Outtake from:
Elephant's Breath and London Smoke
A Dictionary of Color in History
edited by Deb Salisbury
Available at www.Mantua-Maker.com