BLACK, among dyers, one of the five simple and mother colours used in dying. It is made differently, according to the several qualities of the stuffs that are to be dyed. For stuffs of a high price, as woolen cloth an ell and a half or an ell and a quarter wide, broad and narrow rattens, fine woollen druggets, &c. they must use a black made of the best woad and indigo, inclining to a bluish brown. The goodness of the composition consists in there being not above six pounds of indigo ready prepared to each ball of woad, when the latter, being in the tub, begins to call its blue flower; and in not being heated for use above twice; after which it must be boiled with alum, tartar, or ashes of lees of wine, then madder with common madder, and lastly the black must be given with gall-nuts of Aleppo, copperas, and fumach. As for more indifferent stuffs, such as small rattens, and shalloons, as they cannot pay for the expence of maddering it is sufficient that they be well boiled with woad, and afterwards blacked with gall and copperas. There is likewise jesuits black, which is made with the same ingredients as the good black, but without having first dyed the stuff blue.