Nice little video. I like the music too. it's unusual but catchy.
thanks for posting.

Hi Mike, I just wanted to use this opportunity to thank you for continuing to administer the forum. It has been quite a few years now, and i appreciate the effort. I, like some others, go through phases, when I don't visit the forum very often, but lately have been checking it almost daily. The foru...

I faced this dilema a few years ago when my favorite manufacturer and supplier stopped hand-beating leaf and started importing it. They were importing from German beaters and also from China I decided to simply go direct. With a bit of hunting around you can easily find several makers based in China...

a few dollars? OMG...that is just sad. I've been doing a few mirrors in collaboration with a well-known artist. He paints his design on the glass and I do an aged mirror effect in white gold leaf. The large ones (1200mm x 900mm) go for around $10,000. The prices of things just don't follow any logic...

Danny, I simply cut and pasted from the pdf into google translator, one section at a time...maybe a total of 6-8 cut/paste to read it all. Mine opened up the file separately into adobe acrobat (not within a browser window). This may be the difference. Erik, I also have to agree with Danny that work ...

I'm glad this post was bumped up again giving me an introduction to Dean Hensley. Thanks Pat for such a moving and beautifully written potted biography. Brought a tear to my eye. I wonder if others have noted a connection between motorcyles and signwriting? For some reason there seems to be connecti...

I feel that the quality of the gold leaf is a big factor too. I remember doing a large window sign many years ago where I started with the an old book of gold, then continued the work using recently purchased books. The color of the gold was the same, but the texture was very different. In fact, the...

great to see and read. I would be proud of an article like that too. Yes, i translated all the text in sections and read it all....The translation is not perfect, but it conveys the meaning very well. I didn't know you had those family connections in your business. Did I read that correctly?...four ...

Hi Anthony, Just wanted to let you know I've enjoyed looking through the photos. thanks for posting. I had previously looked through them, but this time I realized one of the Jameson mirrors is almost identical (will have to compare side by side) to a mirror in Sydney that one of my clients brought ...

that's a very nice looking piece William. Lovely choice of colors Thanks for the link Ingrid. I was aware of it's existence but haven't used this material either. I hadn't taken much notice of it before, but I want to get some now, because it looks like a really useful material. I feel that it may b...

warm? not exactly...the weather here is really quite strange lately. Unseasonably wet. We have suffered 10 years of drought with water storage levels getting extremely low. To the point that for the last couple of years it has been illegal to water gardens, wash cars, fill swimming pools, etc. Anoth...

Thanks Dave, It is all hand-done. I don't use screen printing at all. I'm not trying to be a purist or anything, it's just that screen printing is something I never got around to getting set up for. Even using masks to apply outlines prior to gilding is something I only started at the request of WDI...

Just want to add my praise. It's very enjoyable seeing it come together. It's very much a Dave Smith design...over the top, complex and tight, but it's a feast for the eyes for that very reason. I used to disagree with people when they would say "less is more"...I can appreciate clean mini...

I agree. Looks better and cleaner without it.

Thanks for the reminder of your site too....Looks like you've got some new picture i haven't seen before. Will have to have a full look through.

Nice art deco design on that one. I love the way Stationery is written, even though it's a little rough in the quality of execution when you look closely. The circle has a small painting of some books. Unfortunately I don't have a close-up but this is a crop from another photo more directly in front...

I thought it was time to take you back into sign history again.

Here's a small selection from Clunes, a Victorian country town with a gold mining past, some really nice old signs and unrestored shopfronts.

A couple of tips Lars, 1. When picking up the gold, you actually don't want static. It is the oil in your hair that is effective in picking up the leaf. You can apply a little oil of some oily type of cream to you hair (or back of your hand) to make it work better. Don't rub the gilder's tip vigorou...

hat kind of leaves are those? Was it brighter in real life? The cool "tie-dye" pattern is the settled out pigment, right? 23 carat gold. yes, it's brighter in real life, but it's not mirror-finish...Adding ink (or anything else) to the water-size kills the reflectivity, but it is still a ...

Anthony, he was deep carving. Also, he didn't fill it with resin, just enough to give it a good thick coating. It still felt dimensional. If you just do the surface it's not as dramatic. With plenty of depth to the sand-blasting, it looked more like a casting. Burning the screen is when you expose i...

I'm still curious for more info Pat. Making the screen with rubylith i understand, but what next? I'm assuming you use the screen to print on a bitumen resist, and then do an acid etch. right? But there seems to be two levels of depth...the main area as one level, and the line work seems to be deepe...

You can tint the water size. I have done this using a pigmented ink (not the dye-type) as I expect it will be less prone to fading. It's a very pretty effect because the ink accentuates the texture of the gold. It doesn't have the same look as a layer of colour glaze backed up with metal or the colo...

David, I have Japanese coloured silver leaf. Not from that company, but from from Hakuza.com It doesn't burnish to a bright reflective finish. The leaf is tinted with dye and also coated with some kind of polymer to prevent it from tarnishing. The resin coating is very thin, but it's enough to preve...

Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist." Larry...brilliant last li...

Wow, Erik, that's really impressive. I wasn't aware you had been working on these all this time. There's a lot of different techniques in it, all of them well-executed. I appreciate and agree with your comments about taking the artform beyond the confines of advertising or the limitations of yestery...

I can't help but take the bait.... If Apple made an ibrush, it would look pretty, but would only work with ipaint, which you could only buy from from an ipaintshop. As for hair...squirrel is softer. It strokes nicely but it flops with a full load of paint. Sable, whether it be either Kolinsky, Chine...

thanks...I think. This is such a great time waster...so many eye-popping signs...and other things to study. Among my fav's - 7039 - the amazing shopfront "mode" building (http://www.shorpy.com/node/5190 - 6 years later) 6822 - the beautifully lettered posters for the theatre. 5880 -clean, ...

not bad for a first go. Good on you. I suggest practicing basic strokes as a first stage....just do a whole lot of strokes...verticals, horizontals, diagonals, and half-circle curves, both left and right. The aim is to get a clean, even line of consistent width. The next stage is practicing corners....

Nice find. You're guess would be correct about the quills. They are lining quills. These are called flats, because all the hairs are the same length. They have a fixed width and you choose the size you want for a particular stripe. This type of lining brush was more popular in Britain and it's colon...

Just thought I'd add a little extra info, especially with the talk of various resins, "cashew" and lacquers. I'm not familiar with some of these traditional Japanese finishes, so I'm not sure exactly what's going on with them. By the way, "Japan" as a paint, is just a term...does...

Hi Erik....hahaha... Asking basic questions is the wisest way to learn. Your comment reminds of that old saying. "There are no stupid questions..." As for Japan paints...someone else should probably answer this, because it is a term that means different things to different people. As an Au...