Traditional signs were required to restore the street signage on the historic buildings which the council still own or have maintainence contracts with. This is work I have produced before but was leter removed possibly due to no longer being required as the modern metal signs are often in place. They tend to be fixed over the old wall painted signs, but in this case they were fixed in a different location & I was contacted to replace 2 old walls signs which had nearly faded from all existance & to refesh them to a former glory.
The original wall painted street signs had all but faded away & so a fresh white rectangle had to be painted before the black lettering & frame could be added.
There was a street sign to be painted at each end of the street, which was largely terraced houses & wasn’t all that long a street, so It was easier to paint one of the rectangle areas white & then do the other end of the street while the first one was drying. This is more pysically exerting but more time saving.
One of the original sterrt signs was quite faded & hard to still read, where as the other had been removed & had new brickwork replacing the old, more than likely to fix structual problems to the building or remove damp etc. So the sign wa totally unreadable & where the bricks had been replaced it was quite noticable, so covering them with traditional signs was a good way to make it seem aged still.
Both Rectangles were painted white & the first dried by the time the second was painted, which allowed the paper drawn layout to be ‘pounced’ onto the surface. This allows traditional signs to be neat & crisp. Its too old fashioned to sketch the lettering straight onto the surface. This could still be done but is just more time consuming & you lose painting time.
Doing the design on paper first means that the writing will match at either end of the street. You use the same layout for both signs. Then The black signwriting is produced, along with the painted black frame & that completes each of the traditional signs.
The layout is seen by the ‘pounce’ which is charcoal powder, as its on a white background. The lettering is hand painted using a traditional signwriter chisel brush.
Painting traditional signs on brickwork isn’t the easiest of surfaces, but in this instance the bricks were generally consistant & the mortar wasn’t that recessed. Some brick work can be a lot more uneven making it tricky to get crisp lettering.
The completed traditional signs on both walls at either end of the street which was met with approval by both the residents, who appreciated seeing some of London’s history being kept & restored rather than replaced & updated.
Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign Writing in London
Sign Writer Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk