Fraktur: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Learning the Craft (Heritage Crafts) Spiral-bound – March 31, 2008

If you’re looking for a book that will greatly help you along on your own Fraktur designing, inking, lettering, and painting journey, this one definitely fits the bill. Step-by step instructions for several projects that show you the entire artistic process in detail, plus lots of motifs like flowers, fruit, birds, hearts, angels, houses, borders, etc. for inspiration (or tracing) so that you can mix-and-match them to create your own compositions, as well as a birth certificate, a house blessing, family trees (two different designs), and a family records design that are all full-sized and traceable, plus a Fraktur alphabet to practice (also traceable), both upper and lower case, which Ruthanne designed to be easier to read than the traditional Blacklettering (but still looks enough like traditional Blacklettering to give it that authentic Fraktur feel).So there’s literally everything you’d need to be inspired to design your own pieces, or for you to trace straight from the book to makesomething super-quaint for your home.Includes the history of Fraktur and photos of antique Fraktur pieces at the end of the book, plus which specific tools are required, like pen point types, choice of inks, papers, and watercolor paint colors for a traditional effect—I really enjoyed doing the little 2 ¾ x 3 ¾ inch step-by-step introductory project she provided because it wasn’t too intimidating for me to get started with. I absolutely LOVE this book, and feel like it was certainly well worth the price. With large glossy pages that are spiral bound in order to lie flat, and excellent color photographs.

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!

Fraktur art is a kind of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, decorating important documents or carrying blessings. The art combines fine calligraphy with folk art illustrations, and flourished in the early 19th century.The author included a brief history of fraktur in the beginning and a small gallery of work in the end, while the rest is devoted to instructions. Most of the instructions assume a solid basis in calligraphy and focus on design and replicating the folk art elements.While a real enthusiast will probably want a more comprehensive guide either to the history or the how-to, this book is great for those curious about the art of experienced calligraphers looking to explore a new form.

Although I have done some watercolor painting, my interest in fraktur creation is new. This book was a great help to me as I develop the ability to paint frakturs. Not only are there written instructions, there is a description of the materials needed, simple drawings to use as well as completed fracturs to inspire. With the help of this book my previous possibilities in painting have been expanded, and that is a good thing!

This book is a wonderful beginners guide to painting Fraktur in the Pennsylvania German style. It does give a brief lesson on how to write one, easy to master, easy to read, script that is appropriate to the genre. To be fair, the subject of calligraphy and the instruction of multiple, more advanced scripts, is far too big a subject to be covered here, it is a subject worthy of it's own book.This book will give you what you need to make a nice gift or art work for your own home. It does a great job of providing inspirational examples and outlines that can be copied or traced, in any combination, to produce your own, unique Fraktur.Another reviewer complained about the lack of attention to lettering, but the content of his review leads me to believe that his interest lies in European Fraktur and illuminated manuscript, not the traditional folk art of Pennsylvania. This book very clearly covers the American art form called Fraktur, which is similar, but far less ornate than it's European counterpart.

J'attendais un livre pour me perfectionner sur la Fraktur, malheureusement c'est un livre pour débutant.D'autre part, c'est plus un livre portant sur la réalisation de petits projets que de calligraphie proprement dit

面白いかなぁと思って購入してみましたが，中身は表紙の感じの絵ばかりです．中には小学生の絵かな？と思わせるようなものばかりのページもあります．タイトルの通りフラクチャー体の本なのですが，文字もあまりきれいでなくて，フラクチャー体を勉強したいなら，もっと別の本もあると思います．これは購入してちょっぴりがっくりでした．