History of the Art of By eing, 311 



But notwithstanding the attention hitherto paid to dyeing 

 by government, it still remained in a languishing state till the 

 year 1643, when a German named Kepfler first brought to 

 England his new-invented method of dyeing scarlet; and 

 because he established a dye-house at the village of Bow, the 

 scarlet he dyed was called the Bow dye'^\ At length a 

 Fleming named Brauer, who in 1667 went to England with 

 Iiis whole family, brought the dyeing of woollen there, in 

 general, to that degree of perfection at which it has been 

 since maintained by the English f. Men of letters in Eng- 

 land now began to turn their attention to this art, and we 

 find a treatise on dyeing published in 1667 t, which was soon 

 followed by others of the same kind. 



As a distinction had always been made in Italy, France, 

 and the Netherlands, between fine and common dyers, the 

 case appears to have been the same in England from the ear- 

 liest periods ; so that blue, red, and yellow, belonged exclu- 

 sively to the fine dyers ; but both the fine and common dyers 

 were allowed to dye brown, fawn-colour, and black §. 



Since the art of dyeing, as we have already seen, could 

 not be revived in Italy, France and the Netherlands, from 

 its long state of depression to which it had been subjected in 

 the fifth century, it will not appear surprising that the Ger- 

 mans, who during the middle ages paid very little attention 

 to manufactures, should begin to apply later than other na- 

 tions to this art, which is always an attendant of manufac- 

 tures. All the beautiful, lively, and high colours, which arc 

 mentioned by the German writers of that period, were pro- 

 cured from the Italians, as these had procured them from the 

 Greeks. 



It is probable that the Germans had dyers of their own for 

 black and brown colours, as the former was their gala colour 

 or colour of honour, and the latter the common colour of the 

 monks and other people, both of which required no foreign 



* Anderson's History of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 77* 

 X Anderson's History of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 132. 

 X William Petty's Apparatus to the History of the Common Practices 

 of Dyeing, in Sprat's History of the Royal Society of London, p. 284. 

 § Chambers's Dictionary of Arts, under the head Djeing. ' 



dye- 



