Copper Pressed Lettering behind Glass by Scarlett Rickard

[DAVE SMITH]

I had an email a few days back from a lady called Scarlett Rickard a signwriter here in the UK. I have never met or talked to Scarlett.She said in her email she had been looking in on this site at all the interesting and great work going on here. She sent me some very nice images of her work and a job she has been working on in her own town of Folkestone, Kent consisting of pressed copper gilded lettering.
The same pressed lettering that Brilliant Signs of London were making at the turn of the century.
I asked her if she would like me to post the images here to show you guy's and also to introduce her to you all. She certainly makes some very nice signs.

Oh and on the first picture check out the pig on the other fascia sign to the right ,probably was a butchers shop or still is.

She explained in this email what she has been upto with all this work


I was amazed to uncover these signs, they go right round the building -
here's one that shows the only original section left during the
refurbishment. The Household Stores bit is later I think, probably 20s,
and is painted rather than gilded. The piece directly over the front
door was missing altogether, so I made a new one for the arts company,
Strange Cargo, that is based there, and I signed it in gold in the same
style as the other signwriters' signatures. One side, which I had to
entirely rewrite (the bit in the photos I sent you) was originally by
Stanley Jones & Co., London. The other side (shown here) was signed
Otto ., Borough Rd, Folkestone. Otto . were a large local
building firm, and they built the building originally to replace an
older one which had been completely burnt to the ground. They sold oil
and colour and apparently a plumber was in the cellar with a candle
next to all the oil vats, and the rest is history!

Must have been quite a feat making perfect male and female dies from
wood - as a letter cutter I know what it's like getting a perfect 'V'
consistent throughout a letter. To have to make it again in reverse
must have been quite something! I wonder if those forms exist anywhere
now?


Attached are one of the finished signs and one
with some of the broken pieces inside the gallery with the new ones
next to them. They were fascinating to do because I assumed the letters
were carved and gilded wood, but to my amazement (and relief!) it
turned out that they were individual pressed copper letters, gilded,
and stuck to the reverse of the glass with lead foil. It made my job a
lot easier!

Scarlett


finished re-furbished sign by Scarlett








some carving she has done

[Danny Baronian]

Hey Dave, thanks for posting.

Nice work Scarlett!

Now sign up on the board and post some more pictures and share your work with us!

Scarlett, please explain how the pressed copper letters were attached. I assume the glass was painted leaving the letter spaces clear, letters applied, but how or with what, then backed up with lead foil?

Thanks!

Danny

[DAVE SMITH]

Message from Scarlett Rickard.
Scarlett said she is waiting upon passwords to get on to the site.
She's asked me to post this info for her.


Can you tell Danny
Baronian that it was all a bit of a mystery! All the panels were broken
except the ones shown in the picture with the scaffolding and the
decorator. We got some glaziers in to have a look and they said that
because of the angle of the glass it was too dangerous to leave it in
situ, so I rewrote all the broken pieces including the signatures of
the previous writers.

The large letters are thin pressed copper with flanges around the edge,
gilded in the centres. They were fixed to the reverse of the glass,
which was painted black in something like Intenso - very dense
oil-based matte finish - leaving negative space for the letters. The
gilding was just the line around the edge of the panels and the
signatures, and they had been done in the same way - the signatures
were painted in negative, leaving the letters clear, and then one leaf
of gold over the back, which had been sealed in with the same foil as
the letters. This foil was gunmetal grey, extremely thin, and stuck
with something very sticky, probably rabbit skin glue. It was quite a
task removing the letters from the glass without bending or damaging
them to reuse them. At first I thought it was lead foil, as I have read
in Victorian books about using lead foil to seal gold and to mask
areas, but actually in retrospect it was probably tin. Where it had
been peeled back it was very shiny. I think lead would have been more
brittle than that after all that time.

Strangely enough the arts company which is based in the building use a
thin self-adhesive tin tape which comes on rolls in their carnival
work, which appeared to be almost identical to the stuff on the
original signs. It is used for sealing heating and air conditioning
ducts, so it's able to handle the extreme heat and cold that it'll be
exposed to behind black paint in a shopfront. The only thing I kick
myself for though now is that when I did it I used oil-based size on
the gold so it's all got a matte finish. Now I know more about glass
work I would have used gelatine - although actually you don't really
notice the difference in finish between the original panels and the new
ones.

And yes, that great pig is on what used to be a pork butchers -
unfortunately the fantastic shopfront was taken out when it was made
into a flat about 6 years ago.



Scarlett

ps I'm so pleased that I've found all these amazing people! I'm no
longer the 'only signpainter in the village'! haha

[Wayne Osborne]

Thats an truely amazing piece of work!- Scarlett- I look forward to reading more from you! (Thanks Dave for posting the pics, and tempting you along!)

[Mike Jackson]

Message from Scarlett Rickard.
Scarlett said she is waiting upon passwords to get on to the site.
She's asked me to post this info for her.

Scarlett,
I don't believe you registered with a recongnizeable user name (full name). I looked back through about 15 pages of recent registrations and wasn't sure which one you might be. There are 57 pages of them now, and only the first six or seven have legitimate sign maker users. Please let us know your user name so we can look for it.

Mike Jackson: co-administrator

[Scarlett Rickard]

Hello everyone!

Finally, I managed to get here! Thanks so much to Dave for inviting me and encouraging me, and for very kindly being my go-between on here.

I love all your amazing work posted here on the forum, I have been back right to the beginning and enjoyed seeing all the stuff you have made and reading all your really helpful advice.

As I told Dave, I have been a bit rubbish and not taken many photos of my later signs... and as some of them were on shopfronts in a fairly depressed English seaside town, they have been painted over already! Shops don't last long in this seasonal place. I am trying to find more pics of stuff I've done to show you, I'll upload something soon.

Cheers for everything, I'm really excited to have finally actually been in touch with actual signwriters and people who love old signs as much as I do! No more boring all my friends with discussions about silvering and UV clear and all that stuff, and I don't feel guilty now for constantly pointing out old shopfronts to everyone! Thanks

Scarlett

[Doug Bernhardt]

I have always loved those English fronts and always assumed the pressed letters were attached (somehow) to a panel in back if it. Would love to see anything more from this excursion into the past!! Also...welcome aboard.

[Scarlett Rickard]

Hi Doug -

As far as I am aware this style of lettering is more commonly made by carving the letters from a wooden back board, and then gilding them. Then the glass that fits over this board is painted to correspond with the letters, so you see through the glass to the wood. I've got some photos of a nice example I think, I'll have a look and post them in a minute. It's a really effective technique, I love these three dimensional signs.

Scarlett

[Scarlett Rickard]

Found them! This is a lovely little sign on a shopfront in the market town of Newark, Nottinghamshire. It is made in the way I just described, carved from wood with a glass panel over it.



It looks as though Tryner Lynn (amazing name!) died and the word 'late' was squeezed in to the existing design. The glass is pretty crudely painted, and probably dates from the time of that change.

[Doug Bernhardt]

Hi Scarlett....I have traveled quite a lot in your fine nation...(in fact our buddy Dave may someday give me honourary citizenship) and have quite a number of pictures of work of this nature. It always puzzled me, and have wanted to see the "guts" of one of these signs, as you obviously have. I have many many questions and a few photos to post. This will take me through the weekend as the whole photo part of posting is still beyond me. Most of the London Pub work I've seen has the bright (water) gilded outlines around a carved (pressed?) letter. I have also seen quite a number from the "Brilliant Sign Co. that Davey has mentioned. More to come soon.