Internal sign writing at the Chelsea Registry Office produced in 23 carat Gold Leaf on 8 internal doors.
The clients were renaming & branding the reception & wedding rooms & wished for a high end look for each of the doors, as they are often photographed & have some wealthy & high end guests along with occasional celebrities being married at the premises.
The registry office is part of the town hall & has a quite grand entrance & exit for those getting married to have photos taken on the steps outside. The clients wished to have this grand look through out.
Each of the rooms had a different name & wording to be written. These were drawn out on paper first in a Palace Script letter type. As you will see the centre lines were drawn so the wording was able to be set centre justified on the doors & also the top & bottom line drawn on the lower case lettering. This is to ensure the lettering is straight.
This particular door shown had to be delayed due to them wanting the wording to go in the place a brass plaque was previously attached. Once the plaque was removed the screw holes & staining was noticable, which meant it needed filling & then a french polisher required to re-match all the staining to the wood.
The internal sign writing started on the other doors that weren’t the actual ceremony rooms to allow the french polisher to complete the alterations & restoring required. The waiting room door was the first of them. The door was powdered so that gold won’t stick to areas around the signwriting. The guide lines drawn in a chinograph pencil & the wording traced on. The signwriting is then produced using a specialist signwriting brush using a mix of paint & oil size.
The gold is applied to the signwriting when just still tacky. Once fully dry the gold is burnished with a soft specialist brush to make the gold flat to the surface & have no blemishes. To complete the surrounding area is cleaned up leaving just the writing.
The internal sign writing was then added onto the room doors, which were just numbered rather than named as well as the toilet door.
All four of these door completed with the interior sign writing on them, all burnished & cleaned off. The following doors to be produced were all in a fairly close proximity but named rooms so took longer to produce.
The first of the named room doors showing after the paint & oil size mix had been signwritten. The other two named room doors once the gold has been applied but before the burnishing process.
All of the named room doors completed including a double doors interior sign writing of ‘Exit Only’ for the doors facing the road, which are where the wedded couple come out to be greeted with confetti & have their photos taken.
Overall the manager & registrars were very pleased with the result & felt it gave the internal sign writing a much improved look rather than the previous less stand out & also less impressive brass plaques. The writing being so much bigger but in a high end script in genuine gold suits the doors & building so well. To the exent that many of their guests have their photos taken using the signwriting, which is quite a compliment!
Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign Writing in London
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