Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57775 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

A Reference that Really Works
I have learned so much from this book. Holly Brackmann explains not only the how-to aspect of surface design in incredible detail & easy-to-follow steps, but also the how-it-works aspect of the processes. She begins her book with an all-important chapter on safety and then goes on to explain dyes, fibers & fabrics, followed by a chapter on color. Then she gets into explaining not only dyes (e.g., fiber-reactive, acid, vat, and disperse), but also discharging, screen printing, monoprinting, stamping, stenciling, resists, devore, textile painting, & embellishments. I love the clear instructions of the processes and the amazing photos, but what I love the most is that she empowers the user to explore and become profient in the processes. That empowering of the student is the mark of a great teacher.

Instruction and inspiration all in one volume
Holly Brackmann's beautifully produced new book, The Surface Designer's Handbook: Dyeing, Printing, and Creating Resists on Fabric, is both a "how to" and a "why." Drawing on her many years' experience as a fiber artist and a college-level textile arts instructor, Brackmann covers the topics promised in the title of her book--and then some--in an encyclopedic manner. Chapters on the different topics begin with readable summaries of the historical and technological development of the process. Clear and detailed recipes and instructions for each process enable beginners to proceed step by step to successful and rewarding results as well as remind the more experienced of pitfalls to watch out for and enhancements to experiment with. The attractive arrangement of a hidden spiral binding is a practical element that enables the user to keep the book open to a particular page while working. Safety considerations, helpful hints, and other useful lists are set apart in different type and colored boxes for easy reference. The "why" comes in with the hundreds of excellently reproduced photographs of the work of Brackmann and many other fiber artists. These illustrations make the book an inspiration to artists as well as a delight for all others interested in the scope and range of textile arts today.

Wonderful book!

Holly Brackmann's new book The Surface Designer's Handbook is long over-due and I have ordered it as the textbook for all my fibers classes. As soon as it arrived my students all wanted their own personal copy so several of them purchased it outright just on sight alone. The spiral binding is excellent and the extent of the techniques covered is wonderful. I teach both beginners and advanced fibers students and this book has everything we need as a textbook.

I use it myself for my own work and find it very helpful, well organized and thorough. The information about making color cards with diluted MX dye on watercolor paper is worth the selling price all by itself. It is a technique I knew nothing about and I am thrilled to learn about it. It has saved hours and hours of dye testing time.

In my classes we had been using Kate Wells' book Fabric Dyeing and Printing and prior to that, Proctor and Lew's Surface Design for Fabric. Now, 16 years later, Holly's excellent book has arrived and is the handbook of the hour. It is up to date, comprehensive and thorough, and should be in everyone's library that works with dyes, textile paints and cloth. It improves on and surpasses every handbook published to date and encompasses a massive amount of information.

I look forward to using it in my classes for many years to come and I salute Holly for the enormous amount of work that went into creating this book. She has provided a gift for the entire surface design community both here and abroad.

Morgan Clifford, Professor
Art Dept / Textiles
University of WI-River Falls