Contains recipes for dye with corresponding dyed cloth samples. Ryan noted what mixtures of ingredients were required to produce certain colors, including blue black, green olive, "invisable" green, slate drab, brown, mulberry, claret brown, etc. He further recorded how much of each ingredient would be required for each color when dyeing a given quantity of fabric. For example, to produce 200 pounds of claret colored American wool fabric, a dyer would have to mix 10 pounds of brown tarter, 75 pounds of camwood, 14 pounds of fustick, 7 pounds of logwood, 10 pounds of madder, and 4 pounds of copperas. The type of wool used with each dye is also identified. The recipes in this volume pre-date the introduction of modern aniline dyes by more than 25 years.
