Whither the Sign Painter?
Sign Painter, circa 1900 Anonymous/©Fredrik D. Bodin
Before the age of computers and large printers, every sizable town or city had sign painting shops, including Gloucester. Signs were hand made by skilled artisans, who learned the trade by means of apprenticeships. In addition to expert handling of the lettering brush, sign painters had to master gold leafing, carving, stenciling, and silk-screening. When I opened my gallery fifteen years ago, I hired a professional sign painter, Bob Condon (now an attorney), to paint me a sign. Curiously, I have about 60 sign making photographs in my collection. These are a few of my favorites.
Gloucester Signs, circa 1915 Alice M. Curtis/©Fredrik D. Bodin
Merry Christmas, Salem, 1909 Alice M. Curtis/©Fredrik D. Bodin
All photographs printed from the original 5×7 inch glass negatives in my darkroom.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Great images, Fred.
At the end of Jared Carter’s poem “At the Sign-Painter’s,” he explains why he liked these men best of all the laborers he met, accompanying his father on his rounds:
For the wooden rod with its black knob resting lightly
Against the primed surface, for the slow sweep and whisper
Of the brush—liked seeing the ghost letters in pencil
Gradually filling out, fresh and wet and gleaming, words
Forming out of all that darkness, that huge disorder.
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Thanks Marty- I’m going to have to read the whole poem now!
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Kudos for the wonderful photographs of antique signs. And thanks to Captmard and Fredrick Bodin for mentioning my poem. A great-uncle of mine, Glen Cooper Henshaw (1880-1946), was a fine-arts painter who hung out in Gloucester during summers in the mid-1930s. He did a couple of colorful advertising signs that I still have, and hope to reproduce someday on my blog, which is http://www.the-growler.com. Hope you’ll stop by.
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