Arts and Crafts Books

This book holds all the information any collector will need. I found it to be very useful.

I was hesitant to purchase Luckey's 12th Edition Price Guide because I have always relied on Robert L. Miller's No. 1 Price Guide in the past. However, curiosity got the better of me and I'm glad it did. It's a great reference, and a very good companion to Miller's guide. The main advantage Miller's 10th Edition No. 1 Price Guide has is all figurines are now shown in color... but the images are smaller than in previous editions. Since Luckey's guide (updated by Dean Genth) is presented in a larger format, it has larger images and text, which makes it easier to read. It also displays more images of the older trademark figurines to show the differences between the older figurines and their current production versions a bit better. This was important to me because I generally prefer to collect the older, more rare figurines.

Figurine pricing is now essentially the same between the two guides, which isn't surprising considering Dean Genth owns Miller's Hallmark in Eaton, OH, the home of Robert Miller.

For the average collector, or one that usually tends to purchase the newer released items, Robert Miller's guide is now more up to date. However, for the truly serious collector, Luckey's guide has more or different information on some of the more rare figurines such as those made in white overglaze and sold only in Belgium in the early days. Since I own several of these figurines, I found the information contained in Lucky's guide very useful.

Highly recommended for both the novice or serious collector... but don't forget to purchase Miller's book too.

I have quiet a few Hummel books, but Luckey's Hummel Figurines and Plates, 11nd Edition is my favorite. The book did educate me in the different Trade Marks on the bottom of the Figurines, The Authors explanation is simple and clear. I purchased many Hummel figurines at Internet Auctions and found that the "Current Value" prices of Mr. Luckey's book are very conservative and very closed to the final Auction prices! I do recommend this book, it is the "real" thing!

A absolute must have resource - well organized, descriptive, and easy to use. It has served me exceptionally well each time I have had to use it!

Make a Windsor Chair (A Fine Woodworking Book) For amateur or advanced woodworkers this is THE book to have if you are aiming for a great Windsor chair. Michael Dunbar is widely, and justifiably, known as America's most well known Windsor chair craftsman. He has taken the best of his personal furniture making classes and boiled it all down into an easily followed, well illustrated guidebook. If this is your first or even tenth Windsor chair project you will find this book invaluable.

Mike Dunbar has probably had more to do with the revival of hand made Windsor chairs using traditional tools and techniques than any other person in the U.S. and his book remains the best single guide to making such a chair. I purchased a copy eleven and a half years ago when I took my first class with Mike and when his book was still in print. I have never regretted the fifteen or twenty dollars it cost. Nonetheless it needs to be thoroughly revised and updated. Even Mike admits there are some serious errors in the book, and some of the techniques he and his students have developed since the book was first published will yield a better chair with considerably less effort. My advice would be to spend the six or seven hundred dollars to take one of his classes plus the cost of meals and a motel room for five days, take copious class notes, and then buy the book as a good reference work for subsequent chairs.

Excellent book dealing ONLY with the construction of the Windor chair. Dunbar takes the reader through the selection and riving of wood, adzing of the seat and turning of the chair legs, through to the finished construction of the chair. Dunbar also explains the construction of a steaming setup and jigs for the bending of wood(s). Dunbar runs a school on the making of Windors and this would be the textbook students use to learn Dunbar's methods. A "can't miss, no regrets" purchase.

I not only have this book, I have made a chair in Mike's workshop in New Hampshire. Mike has been instrumental both through his writings and teachings in the recent revival of interest in the making of Windsor chairs by hand much as they were made hundreds of years ago. His book is my definitive resource for questions about Windsor chair construction when I am working in my shop. In this day and age where most of our furniture is mass produced by machines using wood composites and other man made materials it is refreshing to see how fine furniture was once (and in certain places still is) crafted directly from the forest with nothing but hand tools and the skilled hands of the chairwright

Informative and Entertaining. I enjoyed this book, because he teaches you how to make things with everyday materials. For example the authors forge is made from pipe a wok and a hair dryer. I highly recommend this book.

I bought this book exactly for what the title mean: make my own woodworking tools. Exactly, molding hand plane.

I liked this book because:
-It is is a global and central source of reliable information in his field;
-It offers many options to "do things" to the tools makers who don't (for the moment) want to get deeply involved in blacksmithing;

I disliked this book beacause:
-It does not explain the scientific bases of the field when (I think) is could/should be requires;
-It focus too much (I think) on the autor's life. I enjoy some familiarity with the autor, but at the end, too much paragraph are about autor's anecdotes;

To conclude, I would rebuy this book without hesitation.

*** The "see inside" option played a definitive role in my purchase. I never buy a book I can't "see inside for 4 or 5 pages ***

Mike Burton should be complimented for sharing his multitude of skills with the reading and crafting public. This book is the distillation of many years of practical and academic study. To be able to take advantage of this wisdom for the paltry sum that this book cost is remarkable. Mike has the ability to take us through all the stages in the manufacture of a great variety of woodworking items. He does it in a simple, easy to follow manner and with a beautiful dry wit. If you buy this book you will be in the position to save a great deal on the purchase of essential tools by making many of your own to your considerable satisfaction. I have had the book for only two weeks and so have concentrated on my own particular interest. I now have a splendid array of woodcarving tools. They cost me very little in materials and the saving is many hundreds of dollars.The price of this book would only buy half a woodcarving tool! Mike has a fine eye for a bargain himself and it is a pleasure to be inducted into his economic ways. In the weeks and months ahead I feel that my savings, skills and satisfaction at making my own tools will increase many times. Mike you should have been a New Zealander! You would fit in very well.

Make Your Own Woodworking Tools: Metalwork Techniques To Create, Customize, And Sharpen In The Workshop by carpentry and woodworking expert Mike Burton is an informative and superbly organized introduction to making, modifying, and altering woodturning and woodcarving tools. Methodically guiding readers with a "user-friendly" text on woodworking's most intricate particulars, Make Your Own Woodworking Tools covers such issues as steel and other raw materials equipment and tools, safety, tools without blacksmithing, simple blacksmithing techniques, heat treating, dressing and sharpening tools, handles and mallets, special purpose tools, and five innovative projects. Enhanced with five fund and easy projects, as well as being an ideal reference compendium of highly useful tips and techniques, Make Your Own Woodworking Tools is very strongly recommended reading for aspiring carpenters and craftsmen, and an invaluable addition to school woodshop and community library woodworking reference collections.

I used several ideas in this book to teach an afterschool bookmaking class for K-3rd graders. The books are eye-catching and pretty simple to make, although I did a bit of prep work for the kids.

It was really wonderful to see how much the children loved their projects. They were extremely creative and innovative too, every child made the book their own by doing something interesting or different with the materials provided. This is in stark contrast to several adult bookmaking classes I've taken, where the adult students want to recreate the teacher's book EXACTLY.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone is willing to spend some time making books with kids. Children older than 4th grade MIGHT be able to use this book independently, depending on their experience and motivation.

Regardless, I think this book is wonderful for showing kids just how fascinating and rewarding it can be to make their very own books.

As a teacher, this book is a great resource for ideas to show students how to write and product there own work of literature. We used the book as the basis for a "Make a Book Night" sponsored by our PTA. Students and their parents attended a night of book making and story writing choosing from one of the many book ideas presented in the book. It was a great experience for one and all. If you love books, like to write poetry, stories or journals I highly recommend purchasing

Making Books That Fly, Fold, Wrap, Hide, Pop Up, Twist & Turn: Books for Kids to Make

Good ideas for books to make with kids, and also some basic ideas to further explore in more complex books.

I recently purchased this book and have found it to be a terrific resource for teaching children how to make beautiful books.The instructions and diagrams are easy to follow and very clear. My favourite is the T.V. book. The children in my class had a blast making these books.

Having read all the other books on guitar making, I was amazed to find this one, Making mAster Guitars, so clear, detailed, yet logical and easy to follow. For the first time I felt able to tackle making my own guitar, and the results were pleasing. It would have been nice to have some colour pictures of the historial rosettes, etc., but even so, I advise any aspiring guitar makers to get this one.

I want to try making a violin next, and I will certainly be buying The Art of Violin Making, by the same author.

Although I do not build guitars myself, I am highly interested in its construction techniques. I have been an amateur guitarist for over 25 years now and planning to buy a handcrafted instrument build by one of the contemporary maestroes. In order to be well prepared I wanted to learn more on the history of guitar building, famous instruments and detailed info on how to build a guitar myself. Hauser, Romanillos, various instruments described in great detail with complete instructions on how to build these instruments yourself. The instructions are accurate, elaborate and extremely thorough and even aimed at people who have no expiernce in woodwork at all. This book has it all, even adresses where to obtain wood,tools etc. Highly recommendable!

Great book that has measured drawings of many master guitars. Unlike steel string guitars, where a few models dominate, and look different, say Gibson vs. dreadnaught martin, classical guitars look externally quite similar, while varying a lot internally, and otherwise. Many of the great artists of the steel string guitar play factory models, for a variety of reasons. Top classical guitarists largely play models that originated in small shops with one or a few craftsmen. For these reasons anyone who wants to make a study of building classical guitars will find this eclectic group of guitars very important.

However, one should consider:

The building instructions are 1) European in orientation, few jigs, open assembly and so forth, actually the best place for any guitarmaker to start, but not how most here do; 2) Weak in places, because the writer is not an expert guitar builder himself, though overall very helpful, and a useful reference.

The flip side of a great book on classic designs is that it isn't a good book on current designs. Guitar making theory has advanced somewhat (though one doubts the new instruments are better, they are nonetheless preferred by many anyway). Tone vs. durability or volume for instance. There has been a huge amount of new detail added to modern classicals, for instance work on intonation, volume, wolf notes, fingerboard playability, longevity, and so forth. this stuff isn't here, but on the other hand, it's plastered over the internet.

If you have seen the violin book, this one isn't the same. The violin book was partnered with a greatish builder. Deals a lot with modern practice (though being violins, that isn't that different anyway), and the violin book doesn't have lots of useful measured drawings (any in fact), because you can get patterns of the ouline parts for strads etc...

With whatever reservations, this is the greatest book on the classical guitar, and very reasonably priced, it used to sell for 100.

This is the clearest, and most well-explained text I have found on guitar making. Everything is explained in great detail, and is therefore easy to follow. Courtnalls new book, THE ART OF VIOLIN MAKING, is similarly exellent on violin making, and has a foreword by Yehudi Menuhin.

I learned more from this particular book in the first 30 minutes of reading it, than I did from three other resources on Marbling. I found answers in this book, I couldn't find anywhere else. Great photos of completed works and very simplifed instructions. One section focuses entirely on Preparing to Marble, tools for marbling, set-up, and furthermore is sectioned off by acrylics, watercolor, oil paints and tempera paints. Another section focuses on, patterns, tech. problems, special techniques, marbling on fabrics and resources. I would recommend this book first and foremost before all others.

I found this book at the library and searched everywhere for it. Thanks for carrying it. It has all the info I need to start marbling on paper which is an old art form and hard to find info and supplies for.

This is the best of information . all under one cover...supplier list extremely helpful.Reproductions and clear instructions were all I needed to encourage my interest in this ancient art. It's like receiving an apprenticeship to a well kept secret craft!

This is a great introduction to paper marbling - the technique that produces those wonderful swirls, feathery patterns, and colored speckles on paper.

The book is divided very roughly into three parts. The first gives clear recipes and techniques for preparing the marbling media and paints, for choosing and preparing the paper or fabric, and for creating the patterns. The authors are sensitive to the needs of the home crafter, and generally avoid exotic materials and tools. The second part of the book is a visual catalog of marbled patterns with directions for making them yourself. The final section of the book suggests uses for the marbled paper or fabric - boxes, books, and lots of other applications.

This is a how-to book, so leaves without discussion of some topics. There's not a lot of historical discussion, even though marbling has been used for hundreds of years. It doesn't cover more advanced applications, including marbling the edges a book's block of pages. This is for the starting crafter, though, not for professionals or academicians.

This is an enjoyable intro to a very enjoyable craft. If you want to get started in marbling, I'd suggest starting here.

//wiredweird

I was somewhat disappointed that there was not a more extensive use of primary source materials. This is an easy book to read and understand.

Laurel Horton is an independent folklorist and textile scholar who examines the family quilting traditions of six generations in Mary Black's Family Quilts: Memory And Meaning In Everyday Life. Sixteen quilts here tell the story of the family, a South Carolina legend - and reveals the trunks full of quilts Black left to her descendants. Don't expect a quilter's handbook here: this is local history at its best.

As I am currently studying Historic Preservation, I appreciate what it takes to do research. This book is well-researched, and interesting, to boot.

This is landmark book, one that has the potential to broaden and, at the same time, focus the study of American quilts. It adds substantially to current knowledge of quilt history, particularly in the under-documented inland South. It also models an analytical approach, what one cultural historian calls "cultural behavior," that expands the study of material history to reveal the complex meanings inherent in artifacts.

It is not a "picture book," although it is richly and thoughtfully illustrated. Over 100 sharp images, 32 of them in well-rendered color, depict the quilts and complement the text.

Nor is it a conventional "quilt book," focusing only on quilt documentation.

It transcends categories and is at once an analysis of sixteen quilts made and preserved by one family over six generations, a superb local history, and a study of a family whose values helped shape a community.

But its focus is the sixteen family quilts preserved by Mary Black and donated to a South Carolina museum. In seeking to discover their meanings as textiles and as personal and cultural documents, the author creates a world both immediate and immensely interesting.

This is highly readable book. After the first chapter, in which she identifies and illustrates the analytical procedure she used to study the Black family's quilts, Horton avoids the jargon of scholarship and critical theory. This choice and her crisp prose style are seductive: her book reads more like a story of discover than a scholarly analysis. The truth is, it is both.

The epigram, from James Deetz' "In Small Things Forgotten," suggests the writer's mission and method. Deetz writes, "In the seemingly little and insignificant things that accumulate to create a lifetime, the essence of our existence is captured. We must remember these bits and pieces, and we must use them in new and imaginative ways so that a different appreciation for what life is today, and was in the past, can be achieved."

In Laurel Horton's experienced hands, this approach yields bounty. Horton is uniquely equipped for her task. She has studied the same terrain for 25 years. She knows it from personal experience, from her study of the Scots-Irish who formed its backbone, from her study of the quilts of America and the British Isles. Her understanding of the deeply narrative South Carolina upland culture attunes her to stories and signs that point beyond the concrete object and reveal meaning. In fact, the metaphor running throughout this book is that of the scholar as one who "listens" to the voices in the material remains she studies.

Yet it would be mistaken to conclude Horton regards the scholar only as a medium through which the quilts speak. She knows the textiles exist with a series of contexts that can help free their voices and permit the listener to construct valid meaning.

In a culture where women left relatively few documents, however, the quilts remain the writer's primary sources. Horton says she began her research "with a close examination of the quilts themselves, attempting to set aside what I thought I already knew and trying to be receptive to what they could tell me....I have attempted to attend to the quilts and to `listen' to their stories objectively, without rushing to supply answers to my emerging questions."

The result is a fresh and exceptionally well-articulated understanding of a coherent group of quilts. In her effort to identify their meanings, the author opens a world to the reader and in the end, the quilts also become memorable objects in the reader's experience.

Mary Black's Family Quilts is valuable both to the cultural and political historian. It is important to anyone studying the lives of women in America. Certainly it will become part of any complete bibliography of the history and culture of the American South. It is being read in student coffee houses in Spartanburg and readers interested primarily in local or state history have created long waiting lists for it in Carolina public libraries. In short, it is a book for many readers.

One of its more obvious audiences is that of quilt historians, for whom it provides a model and for whom it is also cautionary. Quilts from the inland South have been subject to many unfounded generalizations. A student of textiles and quiltmaking who is keenly attuned to the differences in the cultures and quilts of adjacent counties in Pennsylvania, for instance, often sees the quilts made south of the Mason-Dixon line as a unit.

Studies like Horton's show the danger of such generalization. They remind us of the variety present even in a generally coherent community. The Spartanburg, South Carolina area and the members of the Snoddy and Black families are not offered as microcosms or even representatives of larger groups. Mary Black's Family Quilts focuses on the particular-quilts made by the women in one family in one place and time. Considering the general lack of scholarly attention so far accorded the quilts of the Deep South and the southern hinterlands, one hopes Horton's work generates the discovery and equally thoughtful study of other groups of quilts in the region.

"Mary Black's Family Quilts" reminds us of the tremendous importance of the concrete detail in the study and communication of meanings in history, the sound or fragrance or scrap of fabric from which explodes a world of meaning. It also reminds us this detail is part of a larger whole. Both in its method and subject, it breaks new ground and will, one hopes, encourage other books that do the same.

For anyone interested in the study of American quilts, women's history, or in the culture and history of the American South, this book is a must-read.

For those of you who love both the beauty of quilts and the process, here is a wonderful book. There are pictures of Mary Schafer's quilts and a great descriptive narrative of how she designed and executed her own designs as well as reproductions of old quilts. I love the fact that she made all her quilts by hand as they were done by our ancestors. There are even a few patterns of her quilts in the back of the book. For me, this is a "must have" for my quilting library.
Helen Cooke Eggleston

Mary Schafer is inspirational. Loved every minute of this book. Loved her attitude towards quilts and quilt blocks and her beautiful quilting patterns. Could have read on and on. Excellent book for those who love reading about prolific quilters, how and why they create so much and the love they bring to their works.

Of all the books on quilting that I have collected over the past ten years - this book is my favorite. It not only incorporates the history of quilting during the mid twentieth centure, (when it was languishing - and before the recent popularity starting with the bicentennial). But, it takes you back with Mary and her friends as they studied the quilts made during the beginnings of this country, and during colonial times. Often hunting through old attics and / or taking photos of quilts made by some of our most famous historical women as well as examples of rare and unusual patterns by those not so famous.

It's filled with sweet stories of when Gwen and Mary were getting to know each other - getting together to "talk about quilts." Also, included are dozens of colored photographs of Mary's quilts with templates for her favorites in the back of the book, a catalog of all of Mary's quilts - which number in the hundred(s), Mary's personal biography, and an account of her own personal method of quilting - - - EVERYTHING BY HAND. Examples of complicated, and also not so complicated patterns. In a word, something for everyone.

You will finish this book wishing that you knew Mary personally, and feeling like you already do. It is a story of a very humble, generous woman who has devoted most of her adult life to the pure joy of quilting and sharing that joy with others.

I've read it over and over again, and it never fails to inspire and motivate as well as feeling blessed that I own such a treasure. Mary's love of quilting is contageous - Gwen's writing is, as always - one of the quilting world's best . . . And-this is definitely a book that every quilter should have in their library.

I have the hardcover version and it is beautiful, both story and photos. The text is wonderfully written. It is a great tribute to a lady that deserves a special place in American quilt history.
Highly recommend

I'm very happy with this book. It is a comprehensive review of dyeing methods and of dye formulas.

This book provides valuable information for anyone wanting to dye wool. While it is geared toward rug hooking, the dyeing information is valuable for any craft. To use the book you only need to buy five different colors of dye.

Maryanne Lincoln's Comprehensive Dying Guide is a must have book for the beginner or expert--It teaches the beginner how to dye and encourages the expert to experiment with the dyes.

It also shows how to get all the colors of wool you would ever need using just 4 dyes.

Anyone involved in rug hooking or wool work will find learning to dye wool is the next logical step to producing unique results - and one of the most essential parts of making finished products outstanding. Colorist Maryanne Lincoln has written articles on dyeing for over 10 years: her lesson formulas appeared bi-monthly for over 10 years in Rug Hooking magazine, and are gathered here in a reference explaining each step. Any involved in wool dyeing should consider the Comprehensive Dyeing Guide to be an essential reference which is packed with color images and coverage of a wide variety of methods.