A graduate of the Philadelphia Textile Institute, Lionel Fuhrman built an accomplished career in the garment industry through his work with Pearl Embroidery and Wishful Thinking. Throughout his career, Lionel Fuhrman specialized in textile production styles such as silkscreen printing.

1. THE HISTORY OF SILKSCREEN
PRINTING - AN OVERVIEW
Lionel Fuhrman

2. INTRODUCTION
 A graduate of the Philadelphia Textile Institute, Lionel
Fuhrman built an accomplished career in the garment
industry through his work with Pearl Embroidery and
Wishful Thinking. Throughout his career, Lionel
Fuhrman specialized in textile production styles such as
silkscreen printing.
Also commonly known as serigraphy, silkscreen printing
is the art of using mesh stencils to print images onto
fabrics. This practice dates all the way back to the
ancient Greece and Egypt, where people would use it to
adorn decorative mosaics and burial tombs. However,
screen printing as we know it today did not become a
common practice until the era of China’s Song Dynasty
in the 10th and 11th centuries. In Japan, artists
expanded upon the process of screen printing by using
silk as the base for their stencils.

3. SILKSCREEN PRINTING
 The popularity of screen printing only grew as it spread into
Western countries. By 1907, it became a patented art form
after Samuel Simon officially registered his unique method of
printing. This technique involved the use of silk or other
expensive fabrics, which meant that the resulting product was
reserved for only the wealthiest individuals.
It was not until the 1930s that silkscreen printing became fully
recognized for its artistic merits. After individuals from the
Federal Art Project established the National Serigraph
Society, prominent artists began to use this technique in their
own work. Perhaps one of the most famous of all silkscreen
printed artworks is the diptych that Andy Warhol created of
Marilyn Monroe. Silkscreen printing has further solidified its
place in modern society by becoming a popular method of
printing graphic t-shirts and other garments.