Print perfect
Inspiration meets instruction in Lotta’s latest how-to guide
By Kate Rockwood
Published: May 5th, 2008 | 11:30am
Lotta Jansdotter fans, rejoice! The designer, who blends an urban sensibility with nature-infused patterns, has followed up her 2007 guide, Simple Sewing, with the new Lotta Prints: How to Print Anything, From Potatoes to Linoleum. It’s a photo-saturated, inspiration-heavy guide that will leave you itching to start a printing project, no matter your level of skill.
Born in Finland, raised in Sweden, and now living in the States, Jansdotter is known for her range of screen-printed home products, which she sells in her Brooklyn shop, as well as online and in retails stores around the world. Ceramics, hand bags, stationary, table linens, address books, and clothing are all printed with Jansdotter’s signature dancing leaves, whimsical trees, abstract flowers, and uneven yet endearing geometric patterns.
Created with Jansdotter’s childhood friend Jenny Hallengren (who supplies the lush photography throughout), Lotta Prints carefully details the basics of printing and then provides projects for rubber-stamp prints, iron-on printing, leaf printing, stencil printing, potato printing, lino-block printing, and screen printing. A handful of included stencils (and a built-in, back-page pouch) make it easy to swiftly translate these pages into action.
Yet Lotta’s strength isn’t as much in her teaching (though she’s a capable and thorough guide) as in her ability to inspire. It’s hard to flip through these 100 pages — of squat chicks printed onto pink neckties or a row of hand-printed envelopes clipped to a laundry line to dry or a super-sweet purple umbrella sporting white butterflies — and not be awed by the power of paint and a little spare time. And that’s pretty much Lotta’s point. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be pretty; it doesn’t have to be difficult to inspire pride; and it doesn’t require a weekend’s worth of effort to make something truly awesome.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Lotta Prints: How to Print Anything, From Potatoes to Linoleum (Chronicle Books)
By Lotta Jansdotter
120 pages
List Price: $19.95
Issue #34
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