Scientific and Reliable Coloring and Cleansing Book.

...For family use. Containing 240 reliable instructions for coloring and cleansing silks, woolens, cottons, and feathers of all descriptions and colors. And bleaching lace or plain curtains.

Printed wraps, 12mo, 200pp. Very Good with light soil; fragile wraps chipping at the edges, including 1/2" loss to the spine heel and 1" gap along the front joint; shallow loss to the lower corner of the cover and first page. "Union and Advertiser" label mounted above the introduction on page 3; ads for local Rochester businesses with attractive typographic designs are printed on color paper leaves and inserted at pages 8 (4p), 24 (2p), 40 (2p), 72 (2p), 112 (2p) and 168 (4p). Scarce: 9 in OCLC. Not in Lawrie. Cover advertises the Rochester Post-Express; rear advertises "O. J. & J. A. Bryan... Druggists and Dealers in Patent Medicines, Toilet Articles, Trusses, Crutches," who promise to "give particular attention to the compounding of any Recipe in this Book."

Marketed to the enterprising woman with some desire for flair and aesthetic polish in their garments and home goods, with many ads for domestic products and advice for novice mistakes, like misidentifying fibers. The introduction emphasizes home dyeing as a means to cost-cutting, claiming, "in the universal practice of economy one cannot afford to such leakages from their purse as this... The books heretofore written on the subject have been too voluminous, vague and unreliable for general use. Practical dyers could profit from the only valuable hints and suggestions they contained, but the inexperienced public failed to find the plain formulas and full explanation which they needed for their guidance... We trust that the book will be found a necessity in many households, especially in country towns" (3-4). Published in a metropolitan area shortly before the rise of mail-order and ready-to-wear goods shifted the economic equation of home-based textile and garment production as a situational necessity.