Message: Hello there. I'm doing the first year of GCSE Craft and Design and part of the course is to design and make a bag with a selected theme.  I have chosen my the to be tie-dye.  However, I desperately need to know if there are any professional or famous tie-dyeing artists/designers. 

There are a great many professional tie-dyers working on a small scale, often selling their work directly to their customers. For examples, look at my list on the page, "Where can I find someone to dye my clothing for me?", and the tie-dye section of my "Links to Other Hand Dyers' web sites" page.

You will want to examine the discussions on the history of tie-dyeing in the Dye Forum; see Tie Dye History and Tie-dye history in the West. There are quotes from media sources contemporary to the tie-dyers of the 1960s. A Time magazine article from 1970 mentions John Sebastian, Tie-Dye Annie, Maureen Mubeem, Bert Bliss, and Will and Eileen Richardson. There are also quotes from a 1970 interview with Maureen Mubeem.

A more recently famous tie-dyer would be Michael Fowler. He authored the DVD entitled "The Art of Tie Dye"; the blurb for this video mentions that "he has been commissioned to make tie-dye pieces for Shure Microphones, Volkswagen of America, Austin Powers, Sony Entertainment, Rolling Stone and Musician Magazines, as well as the BP-Amoco Corporation". He created a tie-dye community around the website he founded, Tie-dyed.com, then abruptly disappeared from public view around the end of 2005. The DVD is still in demand, although it is out of print; used copies are difficult to come by.

Other tie-dyers known for their publications include Tom Rolofson and Martine Purdy, authors of the "Tie Dye 101" and "Advanced Tie Dye Techniques" DVDs, and Brad Garrett, author of the Phat Dyes series of tie-dyeing videos. These videos go into far more detail than any of the books available on the subject. An earlier tie-dyer known for her publishing on the subject is Virginia Gleser, author of a simple introductory book, "Tie Dye: Back by Popular Demand"; she was a member of The Farm, a commune in Tennessee where some of today's most popular tie-dye patterns were created, where she and her husband, Robert Gleser, started tie-dyeing in 1979.

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