Dress coat tail pockets

[big muddy mess]

Were there any other colors except the light brown or tan used on the tail pockets of federal dress coats. I have seen a few reproduction coats from approved vendors that have a black pollished cotton instead of tan.

[Jeffrey Przewozniak]

Re: Dress coat tail pockets

Hi Dustin,

While exacty a huge number, here are two examples of brown polished cotton ones...

http://www2.inxpress.net/jwedeward/original_frock_coat.htm

I am in earnest,

[SCSecesh]

Re: Dress coat tail pockets

While a bit difficult to prove, I'd guess that at least some of the "brown" cloth/threads/warp in todays relics was indeed black when issued. The basic pigment used for black is carbon and is collected from various sources giving us various quality levels. Poor black pigment will fade to a brown with exposure to sun/air.
Any guesses which industry get the pick of black pigments today?? You may be surprised, but they use the vast majority of said pigment!!

[Hank Trent]

Re: Dress coat tail pockets

The basic pigment used for black is carbon and is collected from various sources giving us various quality levels.

Most black textile dyes in the 1860s used carbon? Do you have documentation for that? For black paint, yes, but the majority of black dye recipes for textiles that I've seen are logwood-based combined with a variety of other dyes/mordants, not including carbon. I can post the info if anyone wants, but I'd like to see the carbon-based ones.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Clark Badgett]

Re: Dress coat tail pockets

Hank, I would be most appreciative if you would share the dye reciepts you have. I have been giving some thought to starting to try dying cloth. Unfortunately I have few reciepts now.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Dress coat tail pockets

Black, alas, is not the easiest place to start dyeing. Getting a deep, rich, permanent black was difficult in the period.

The following is from The Dyer's Companion by Elijah Bemiss, 1815

[Black's] principle subject is logwood;... The barks, galls, sumac, &c. serve to make a body with the goods for the logwood to act on, the acid of argal and the alkali, corrects the vitriolic acid, that it receives by the green vitriol or copperas; this vitriolic acid rouses the logwood and gives it a purple brown for which it must be corroded either by acid or alkali, or both...

Receipt 141st. For Black.

For one hundred pounds of cloth, fill your copper with water, then add sixty pounds of logwood chips, thirty pounds of sumac and three pounds of nut galls, or white oak bark as prepared for tanners may be substituted for nut galls; heat and boil well one hour, then run your cloth one and an half hours; then take up and cool, boil again, and run as before; cool, and take two pounds and a half of pearlash, dissolve it in six gallons of warm water, then pulverize one pound and a half of verdigrease, and add one gallon of the pearlash liquor; let it simmer over a moderate fire with often stirring, but not boil; then take thirty pounds of copperas and put with the remaining pearlash liquor, and dissolve it, then add it to the dye, run your cloth one hour, take out and cool; then add the verdigrease solution, run again with the dye boiling, run and air as before; then add three pounds and a half of blue vitriol, run again and you will have a fine black.

The following is from the Scientific American, July 28, 1855. Other black dyeing procedures are also mentioned in this article, all containing logwood, iron and other dyes, but no carbon.

The common way of dyeing a good black on silk is to prepare it in a mordant of the nitrate of iron, wash it well, and dye in a liquor of logwood... The liquor of 6 lbs. of logwood, boiled for one hour, is sufficient for ten pounds of silk. Some fustic liquor (three pounds) is added, to throw the color on the jet shade. The goods are handled for about half an hour in this logwood and fustic liquor, then lifted, washed, and dried...

Another way to dye black is to make up a hot solution of copperas, a little blue vitriol, and some fustic in a boiler and handle the goods in this for one hour. Four ounces of copperas and one-fourth of an ounce of blue vitriol, are sufficient for each pound of silk. When taken out of this preparation they should be of an olive color, they are now hung up and aired for ten minutes. A clean vessel of logwood liquor is then made up, and the goods entered at a temperature of about 80 degrees. The heat is then increased to nearly 200 degrees, and kept at that heat for half an hour...

In dye shops where wool and silk are colored, it is a common practice to prepare a batch of woolen goods, without any addition of copperas, in the same preparation as that used for a batch of silk goods; and as silk does not take up the coloring matter of the logwood so well as wool, the same liquor which has dyed a batch of silk goods is nearly of sufficient strength for dyeing a batch of woolen goods. This last is the common method of dyeing in jobbing dye-houses; the nitrate of iron process is the common method in skein dye-shops.

The following is from the Scientific American, March 8, 1851:

To dye a black on wool, first have the goods clean, then boil them in an iron or copper vessel, along with three ounces of copperas and one of the sulphate of copper, to the pound of goods for about one hour. After this they should be taken out, quickly handled and dried and well dripped and boiled in a solution of logwood at the rate of half a pound to the pound of goods, for about one hour, after which they should be taken out, well dried and washed. This makes a blue black. If some fustic is used along with the logwood, the color is made a jet black. If the color be grayish, it wants more logwood, if brown, it has too much logwood. The logwood should be in a bag, or else boiled in a separate vessel, and the liquor only used. This will dye woolen yarn and cloth. The bichromate of potash is now used in place of the sulphate of copper. It makes a good and fast black and is an excellent mordant for white goods, but is not suitable for dyeing goods that may have had some other color. The receipt we have given will re-dye old goods. The goods should be well stirred and not crowded too close in the boiler. If not quickly handled when taken out, they will be wrinkled and consequently spoiled in a measure, for wrinkles are not easily taken out. Silk and cotton cannot thus be colored black.

Aniline black was barely on the horizon at the time of the war, but a patent describing the process developed by an Englishman can be found by searching for patent number 38589 here http://164.195.100.11/netahtml/srchnum.htm

If you're interested in period dyeing, I'd highly recommend Natural Dyes and Home Dyeing by Rita J. Adroski. On the subject of black dyes, she says,

The most important application of logwood was in dyeing blacks, which continued throughout the first third of the 20th century. Since black was considered a compound color many dyers felt that it required a combination of dyes, each of which yielded a different tone. Thus a black recipe might use logwood and sumach for their black tones, fustic for yellow, and a metallic oxide such as copperas which in the process of oxidation fixed the black. Sometimes 18th and 19th-century dyes used so many ingredients and such great quantities of them to reinforce the effects of logwood that even without it the dye solutions might have yielded the desired deep black tone.

I'd still like to see evidence for carbon used in dyeing cloth.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net