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I love this book it is useful in many ways.I use it for reference, inspiration, education.This is a MUST HAVE.
My students are now very careful to use this book to reference supplies for their projects. Manufacturers send the hazard information, but it is also in small print and technical so many people just ignore them. This book has easy to read charts on the most commonly used materials as well as little hazard markers in the text describing the various projects featured. Costumes and Chemistry is a great resource for both amatuers and professionals because it contains easy to read and follow safety information for many products used in the creation of speciality costumes. I reccomend this book highly. I use it as a teaching tool to emphasize to students the necessity for the proper equipment and safety gear when creating speciality costumes. The information about the safe use of the right kind of products is invaluable. There are many websites that students reference to create specialty costumes that ignore basic safe use of adhesives and other substances.
Many incredible-looking costumes are demystified--once you read the process outlay, you may frequently find yourself thinking, "Hey, I could do that." or "Wow, so THAT'S what they used."Seriously, i cannot sing enough praise about the quality and scope of this textbook; don't be scared off by the title--it's not full of equations and molecules. Moss lists proper protective equipment for all potentially dangerous materials, clean up information, and warnings if applicable (i.e. Some you will recognize from film and television, theatre, dance, advertising, all kinds of sources. The book would be worth its weight in gold as a reference volume just on the strength of the first half alone.
This is the best reference book out there, hands-down, bar-none, for those in the field of crafts artisanship. It's a wealth of amazing, helpful, illuminative information for costume engineers, both veteran and aspiring. There is no better insight into the costume engineering process than reading about how someone has done something and seeing steps along the way. It is an indispensable bible of fantastic resources and, despite its high price tag, i highly recommend that anyone interested in costume construction buy it ASAP, PDQ.
The second half, however, is the gravy on the biscuit.The second half is a compendium of an enormous number of specific costumes--walkaround mascots, monsters, masks, wings, crowns, body padding, armor--with precise information on how they were built, often with process shots, original design renderings, construction methodology, and tips from the artisans who made them. (Can you tell this is one of my required textbooks). It was published in 2004, after years of grant-sponsored research and development, and thus may be the most up-to-date resource of its kind in the field of costume production.It's divided into two halves, the first half comprised of materials and safety information, and the second half devoted to process explanation and documentation.The first half covers an enormous range of products, divided by purpose (paint, adhesive, dye, etc)., type (cold process dye, acid dye, disperse dye, etc)., brand name, and so forth, and then goes on to test the efficacy of the product in a variety of situations (washfastness, lightfastness, dry-cleanability, etc). "Do not clean up with bleach.") She worked with industrial health and safety advocate Monona Rossol to make absolutely sure that the information in the book was vetted for safe process instruction.
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