Intended in part as an introduction to the archaeology of dyeing, this article hinges on documents (of the 1830s and 1840s) about the plant and materials used for dyeing by Joshua Wardle, a Staffordshire silk dyer. Use is made of two surviving stock inventories and some suppliers' invoices to provide annotations on the equipment and dyestuffs of a dyer who was almost entirely using vegetable dyes in the last few decades before the start of the age of artificial dyes. Tables of possible colors to be obtained from Wardle's materials have been compiled as far as could be ascertained from contemporary and near-contemporary handbooks. -- AATA