Welcome to The Hand Lettering Forum! This is an interactive Bulletin Board on the topics of Sign making, design, fabrication, History, old Books and of coarse Letterheads, Keepers of the craft. The Hand Lettering Forum features links to resources, sign art history, techniques, and artists profiles. Learn more about Letterheads at https://theletterheads.com. Below you'll see Mchat has been added as a live communication portal for trial, and the Main forum Links are listed below.
Like the title states, any insight would be greatly appreciated. I picked these quill brushes up for 30 bucks. I am a sucker for anything vintage hand painting related.
The box is about 6 or 7 inches long and about 3 wide. Its pretty cool and appears to be hand made. I bought them from someone in London. I figured that these are old carriage and wagon stripers but not 100%. The do look pretty old.
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 colonies, but the sword liner or dagger liner is more often used in USA. It has the shape of a dagger with varied hair length and is a more versitile brush. Light pressure gives a fine line and heavier pressure a thicker line.
Like a musical instrument, any of these striping brushes take some skill to use properly and get a clean result. After nearly 30 years of practice, I'm pretty comfortable with lettering brushes, but I have always found these flat liners a challenge to get a really good line than I'm 100% happy with. Give me a dagger anyday.
Old brushes tend to get fairly brittle and don't feel as nice to use. They don't flex as nicely. I have old brushes from my grandfather who was a coach-painter, but I never use them...they feel awful...bend in the wrong place.
BruceJackson wrote:Old brushes tend to get fairly brittle and don't feel as nice to use. They don't flex as nicely. I have old brushes from my grandfather who was a coach-painter, but I never use them...they feel awful...bend in the wrong place.
Bruce, also 30 years of experience with lettering burshes? Where am i in this world with my 3 years of Letterhead experience?
This kid on the block has used a gilders removal brush from my great grandfather, seriously the grandfather of my dad did gild also, and when i used the brush a lot of hears broke and fall to the ground. leaving a disoriantated Erikieee look with his bottom lip hanging out. Now the brush lies in my brush cabinet as a relique to give me superpower and gilding strenght.
And it really works.
I love to use liners and would like to get a double out like the one on the far left. Old brushes can be used and not be brittle if they have never been used in paint. Any others are museum pieces.
Thanks to everyone for the input. I was not planning on using them. Just trying to save them from an trip to the landfill. I might display them somewhere, maybe a shadow box or something.
I dong think I would even try to use them, they look incredibly difficult to use.
A couple of them look to be similar to the old Grumbacher round liners.I believe they came in lengths up to 2 1/2" long and were very difficult to use.I think I still have some around.Their biggest problem was if you got the correct paint consistency to pull a long line the brush would flop over nearly 90 degrees.
As to using older brushes;awhile back I acquired a substantial number of old Mack striping brushes(along with a sign kit)from a customer whose grandfather was a sign artist in the 1920's and 30's.These brushes were fairly stiff;having been stored in some type of preservative.
I managed to soften them all up over a period of about a week and all but 3 were still very serviceable.I am currently using 2 of them in my daily work and they perform as well or better than any new brush.I very carefully clean them after each use and have had no issues with hair falling out as yet.One of them did but I attributed it to the brush cleaner I was using at the time and upon switching to mineral spirits had no further problems.I had experienced this problem with new brushes as well.Just my opinion.
"May you be in a half hour before the devil knows you're dead"
Leo,
I'd say your in alot of danger at the moment! If I were you I'd pack those up and mail them to me RIGHT NOW ! A young guy like yourself , alone with old tools like that, who knows what could happen.
It's a great score for sure. Have you cleaned and oiled em up yet? They may still be in fine working order or not.I always keep my eye out for old brushes. The box alone is quite a find.
If they work and you want to sell one of them I'd be interested. Let me know.
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads