Customer Reviews

Fraktur: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Learning the Craft (Heritage Crafts Today Series)

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I was greatly disappointed by this book, and had I not ordered it from overseas I would have been delighted to return it.

This is a very beautiful book, by someone who is clearly an expert in Fraktur. The book is filled with luscious, multi-colour examples that are a pleasure to look at. That said, I feel that the title of the book strongly misrepresents its content. The title says "Fraktur: Tips, tools, and techniques for learning the craft". Foolish me, this title has led me to conclude that I might learn Fraktur calligraphy from the book. If you wish to learn to write in Fraktur, and you are considering this book, then you are better off looking elsewhere. This book devotes very little to teaching the writing of Fraktur, contains no explanations as to the order of the strokes needed to draw a letter. There are many specific issues involved in writing Fraktur, and this book addresses none of them.

What this book seems to be about is how to use Fraktur for creating beautiful ornamentation, documents, greetings, etc. It will show you how to combine Fraktur with birds and flowers and hearts and what not, to create traditional-looking, aesthetically-pleasing, artwork, gifts, signs, etc.

I don't think the book is very good on pedagogy: It doesn't really teach anything related to the execution of the Fraktur script, and discusses everything else instead: pens, nibs, quills, paper, colour, etc. How can you have a book on Fraktur and not say a word about ligatures??

Many of the examples were executed by a shaky hand. Fraktur is visually stunning when executed precisely. Some of the more wobbly samples were painful to watch, since it was clear that the person who wrote them knows what they're doing, and I mean no disrespect by this criticism of the book, but perhaps the examples on page 54 & 55 should have been done by a more steady hand.

Fraktur is a very important script, and there are many reasons for learning to write in it, ornamentation being only one of these. When I bought the book I honestly thought it would teach how to draw the letters, have graded exercises on strokes, a discussion of Fraktur styles (of which there are perhaps more than a dozen), a discussion on the serifs, a discussion on the ligatures of which Fraktur has many beautiful ones. There could have been a discussion on writing material: Fraktur can be written by pen or quill, but it is often written by brush, and on the blackboard it is written with chalk... There are big difference between the execution of Fraktur letters using chalk and the same using a brush. Another example of what the book is lacking is Sütterlin -- the cursive writing that often accompanies a Fraktur title: There are several examples of Sütterlin in the book -- unexplained, unmotivated, without any guide as to how to write in it. There is so much to write about Fraktur, and pretty photos cannot replace all this!

I enjoy using this book and have done projects out of this book. If you are not a calligrapher then you might want to buy a book that teaches the hand of Fraktur or German Text also called Gothic and Blackletter. I can suggest "George Bickham's Penmanship Made Easy (Young Clerks Assistant" for training the eyes and studying the forms of the German Text. I recommend "Calligraphy for the Beginner by Tom Gourdie" on page 41 of his version of German Text. I would also suggest you to google German Text or Fraktur and to visit IAMPETH website under Lesson. I look forward to making more projects in this book.

It is sad that the author is no longer with us, this is a special (one of kind) book which I will always be thankful to the author for publishing.

This is a beautifully illustrated book of a rare art form. She has included how-to tips for the beginner to the expert. I got it to do my own family trees for my grandchildren and it has helped me tremendously. Thank you to a fine artist. Elaine Crigler

I cannot put this book away! It's one of the best books that I've read on Fraktur. It's very detailed and has a ton of information. I highly recommend for the Fraktur Artist as well as the appreciator of the wonderful art form!!
A MUST!

I don't see how anyone can be disappointed with this book. Especially if you are just beginning to gain an understanding of the art. She writes with a very down-to-earth style that anyone can understand and learn from.

My wife says that the content is great, and I was very impressed with the physical design of the book.