Gold leaf property numbers produced on a high end apartment front door by Traditional Signs of London.

The client had a a premises with a quality finish oak door, which was matching all the other residences within a historic building near Whitehall, Central London.

The properties had some variations of door numbers, but on the whole were hand painted & gilded in a serif typeface.

 

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Also the door stains weren’t fully matching with some being much darker than others. Due to this is was decided to go with matching as much as possible to the door nearest the clients apartment door.

Unfortunately the frieze rails weren’t matching in size, which meant after tracing off the ideal matching typeface, it had to be re-drawn out in a smaller size to fit the frieze rail.

 

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The artwork drawn on paper on site is then made into a pounce pattern. The artwork is traced off onto the door.

Measurements are taken & used to ensure all the numbers are centred with the door & level/upright.

The markings are visable enough to paint to. The gold leaf property numbers are then started.

A mix of specialist glue & paint is applied stroke by skroke with a specialist quill sign writer brush.

Once all the letters are written in the gold size, the leaves are applied.

 

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23ct gold is laid sheet by sheet, covering each letter, then burnishing off any excess gold.

To prevent any gold laying on the door instead of the numbers, powder is added prior to painting with the gold size.

 

 

 

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The next stage is to apply the cast shadow.

This is pre marked out with the traced off template, which is used as guide to paint the shadow on each number.

 

 

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Once all the numbers have a cast shadow, the gilding & paint work is completed.

All that is left do do is to allow for both the gold leaf & paint to dry to the wood and then with a damp cloth just gently clean off the marking made in wax pencil or chalk when marking out the gold leaf property numbers.

 

 

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This completes the work required to create the gold leaf property numbers.

Its was precise to their requirements so naturally they were pleased with the results.

 

 

 

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Hand Painted Traditional & Contemporary Sign writing in London

Sign writer: Traditional Signs of London

info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk