Only the Best Dressed Sign for Wicked Peacock!
We’ve opened our retail space in the seaside town of Rockport, MA to much success, and we’re so excited about everything these days! Well, we’re ESPECIALLY enthused about our hand-painted signage and so are the multitudes of folks who compliment the design and craftsmanship.
The design work, as we’ve recently blogged, is the creative genius of Amanda Williams Galvin, but materializing her digital vision is one of the coolest artistic companies in Boston, Best Dressed Signs.
Founders Josh and Meredith are Bostonians by way of the Bay Area in San Francisco, and they took the craft of sign making with them. “Josh has always been interested in letters, since his teenage graffiti days growing up in the East Bay of San Francisco. In art school at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he focused his studies on Renaissance art and became very interested in the concept of the apprenticeship system. After school, he wanted to do some kind of art that required an apprenticeship and he initially looked for work as a tattoo apprentice. Then a friend told him about an apprenticeship with New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco and the rest is history!”
The process of custom making a sign is no small undertaking, and requires tremendous skill. “If Josh is designing the sign, as opposed to just executing a design that the client has provided, he’ll draw a sketch and submit it to the client for approval. Once it’s approved we’ll cut the wood (we use a specific type of wood made for signs called MDO or Medium Density Overlay), sand and seal the edges with an elastomeric sealant, and roll out the background color with shot lettering enamel. We call these processes “prepping the board.”
After this initial prepping, the fun begins! Here, Josh scales the design on tracing paper, and creates an outline of the design on wood. “After the design is traced, we use an Electro Pounce machine to perforate the pattern. The Electro Pounce is a machine that conducts an electrical pulse into a stylus that burns tiny holes into the paper. Then the pattern is “pounced” onto the board with chalk. The chalk goes through the perforated paper, leaving outlines of the design on the board that Josh uses as guides when he paints.”
Here is a visual tour of the process of making a sign--LOTS of steps and preparation!
[caption id="attachment_1638" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Projecting the Pattern[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1639" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Sanding the Board[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1640" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Sealing the Edges[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1641" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Perforating the Pattern[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1642" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Pouncing the Pattern[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1644" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Chalk Outlines[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1645" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Painting the Size[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1646" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Painting the Size[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1651" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Adding the Blues[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1652" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Measuring[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1653" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Drilling[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1654" align="aligncenter" width="547"] BDS Signature[/caption]
If the sign has surface gold like the Wicked Peacock sign, Josh will paint a size—a specific type of adhesive for surface gilding—onto the area where the gold leaf will go. Once the size dries to a specific tackiness, gold leaf is applied to the whole area and then the excess is brushed off, leaving the gold stuck only to the areas where the size was applied. It’s a little more costly, but well worth it! The gold glistens and pops in the sun!
Comments
Very fun to see this project beginning to end. Thanks!
This is awesome! Loved seeing that beauty come to life. <3