Retail signs produced by sign writing & gold leaf gilding together  for a botanical business in East Dulwich, South London.

The first stage was to surgically clean the windows which were to be gilded with gold leaf. This is done to remove any grease & particals from the window surface to allow a water size to apply to the window smoothly & without any blemishes.

The water size was then applied using a soft mop brush, this allows the even flow of water size to fill the centres of the area that gold needs to be applied to.

The gold leaf is then carefully applied & allowed to take to the watersize to then lie flat to the surface, spread & iron itself out flat as it dries.

The gold needs time to set & cure so the ‘backing up’ isnt done until the following day ideally.

The following day the retail signs on the shop front fascia were produced with painted sign writing.

All the sign writing was produced using a specialist sign writer quill brush.

The wording was balanced out across the whole shop front, which was positioned in the right place before sign writing.

When sign writing & gilding together, its better to think of dry times for the layers of both the paint & the gilding. Once the shop front was completed, it meant ‘back up’ of all the gilding would be dry

So the next stage was to clean off the excess gold leaf from the windows & then to ‘pencil’ varnish the gilding.

With the ‘back up dried, there is no chance of the gold or outlines being removed. The excess gold is taken off the window by a damp soft sponge & some powder.

With the sun setting the work was being completed at just the right time. You can see the varnish looking like jelly wround the edges of the sign writing.

The gold mirror finish catches the light & reflects it. Pure gold is never something that cant be matched.

Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign writing & Gilding in London

Sign writer: Traditional Signs of London

info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk