Signwriting

BEFORE ANOTHER YEAR has passed me by I wanted to show you some sign painting I did last year for two local friends. The first was for Yuli Sømme of Bellacouche Felt Studio - whose wonderful local Devon wool creations I'm sure many of you will be aware of. I painted a sign for her door, a long thin double-sided A-board, and a free-standing sign for further up the lane, or outside the door. These photos (apart from the one to the right at Yuli's new studio) were taken back when Yuli and I were studio-neighbours: we've both got new premises now! I based the letters on a medieval Devonian alphabet, and the ornamentation was inspired by Yuli's recurring leaf motif.

I have always enjoyed lettering - something I grew up watching my sculptor parents do (though their many lettering jobs were carved in wood and stone rather than painted). I learnt to strive for a pleasing serif, and found much delight in making artistic yet balanced, properly weighted letter forms. Beautiful alphabetry is harder to find these days with generic plastic shop signs and computer-fonts muscling in everywhere you look. I do not, however, consider myself by any means a signwriter! My lettering has an artistic wonkiness to it, and liberties taken with spacing that you'd never find under the brush of a professional signwriter. The sign painting I do is the result of an artist making lettering, and cannot compare, for example, to the stunningly exquisite signwriting by my friends Ash and Sarah Bishop at The Brilliant Sign Company, or to the beautiful letterwork of Andrew Grundon at Signature Signs. But I continue to love lettering nevertheless!

These signs were made for another local friend - Davide Brady-Picone's acupuncture clinic. He wanted something traditional and Victorian-flavoured, with a recurring fern motif.

All the lettering takes me a ridiculously long time. And these ones were particularly fiddly, as I was using oil-based eggshell paints which had to be warmed on top of a heater before they were liquid enough to work with.

I made four signs for Davide - a large one for over the door, two smaller ones to lead people up the stairs and an A-board for the pavement outside.

These following photos below show off the signs best of all - they were taken by another local Dartmoor talent - Juliette Mills - a very fine photographer indeed - and show the signs on display between florist and wine shop!

© Juliette Mills Photography

© Juliette Mills Photography

© Juliette Mills Photography

© Juliette Mills Photography

Silver & Gold

ONE ICY MORNING as the light crept over the edge of my day, I stepped out into the frosted world and found there on the cold ground a lost wing of summer, its flutter of gold now flightless and fallen, as the crisp stilling of silver winter rose up. 

Everywhere a quiet alchemy was taking place. The cold gate latch ice-clanged. Frost and rust: strange playmates.

Here I stood, on this late November day, as the Earth's Wild Jeweller threaded her silver through the rich golds of autumn.

Birch trees edged with peeling paperbark were amber-lit by the first light against blue moonstone-cold fields; autumn's late-clinging leaves shone golden in the silver morning.

Old bracken and new ivy, brown and green, were adorned by the twin lustre of those two precious metals of fable and proverb, found in Long John, in apple, in moonlight, in heart, in pirate's swag and tax collector's booty. The Earth's Wild Jeweller had cast a metallurgist's spell to enchant any lost or jaded treasure-hunter.

I stalked the paths of this 24 carat world, the treasure chest of my heart full up with iridescent awe, and ringing in a momentary gladness.

As the light found its way over ice-stilled leaves and grass blades caught in the electrolysis of winter...

Fallen acorns and upturned mushrooms and leaf skeletons grew tiny, quiet crystals of the rarest value...

And all the while, in this shining hush, not one of the world's appraising marketeers could fathom or match the value of this, my silver and gold.