A good shop sign is not just about advertising – it’s a civic gain, adding something to a town or village’s sense of place and identity. So it is with the newly painted sign for Harry CJ Wix, by top signwriter Jack Hollands – known as ‘Signwriting Jack’ – which, we hope you agree, looks as if it’s been there for decades.
Incorporating the Harry CJ Wix logo, the sign is resplendent on Harry’s shopfront and follows the design originally created for the shop in the early 20th century. Jack has finished it off with a flourish that captures the shop’s past, present and future.
“The lettering is in real gold leaf and the Roman-style lettering is classic,” says Jack. “I think there’s a timeless kind of Britishness here.”
Jack, now 36, started signwriting when he was 23 after he graduated from the University of the Creative Arts in Graphic Design with a love of letter forms. He then did a signwriting apprenticeship with signwriter Nick Garrett and spent a year painting signs for every kind of business from tattoo parlours to fishmongers. In doing so, he helped to update the ancient craft of hand signwriting, which is now buoyant.
“When I started 12 years ago it was rare to find anyone sign writing and practitioners tended to be old,” says Jack. “In the 1960s it had become a dying trade. But now young people are getting into signwriting and the last ten years has seen a big resurgence of interest.”
Now, the new signwriters have found a ready market from clients who want their shops to look distinctive and different. “A lot of people don’t feel their shop is finished until there’s a name on the door,” says Jack. And the new breed of businesses – from luxury fashion parlours to food shops – are eager patrons of the form, meaning that Jack's workload is varied and exciting, as well as socially and geographically mobile.
“You might work for a fashion house in London one day, or paint a rural house number the next," he says.
London-based Jack goes between jobs on his motorbike and after a consultation and a few charcoal sketches, he starts to paint. His preferred products are 1shot enamel paint from the US and Keeps paint from the UK, and his letters are given form by way of his preferred gold leaf from Italy. Using these materials ensures an elegant but tough sign, one that is designed to work for a long time, thus making a visible statement that the business will endure.
“The fascia will live a long time,” says Jack. “I call it ‘armoured paint’. It’s very tough.”
Jack can usually finish a sign in a day, using his favourite Kolinsky sable-hair brush: fine-tipped with lots of control and wrapped in a feather of a Condor on a wooden stick. “My brushes are hand-made in England,” he says. “It’s quite romantic and amazing that these things are still made.” Jack also uses one of those enigmatic batons called a mahl stick – an implement that has been used to support the artist's hand for hundreds of years.
Signs become part of the archaeology of a place, covered and uncovered. As Jack observes, they are often plastered or painted over, and are sometimes lost forever. But there are great survivors and since the book ‘Ghost Signs: A London Story’ by Sam Roberts and Roy Reed came out in 2021, there’s been massive interest in the signs of the past, and how they offer a direct link to our history. Look up in a town like Woodbridge and you’ll find survivors from the past – signs and windows with gold-leaf on glass - a favourite of country lawyers - and the occasional older sign.
Why the interest now? “I think people are turning back to hand-painted signs because they offer individuality and uniqueness in a mass market age,” says Jack, who can even identify the hand of other signwriters. “For example, there’s a signwriter in Suffolk called Wayne Tanswell and I can always identify his work.”
Whenever he travels, Jack is compelled to look at signs across the world and was delighted when his father-in-law met a signwriter in Verona, Italy, who knew who Jack was. That shows that the signwriting renewal is happening elsewhere, and Jack always relishes an opportunity to send designs to the global community of signwriters. This uptake goes beyond the signwriting community, with a flourishing interest in the craft visibly taking place on Instagram and Pinterest amongst the wider public. But it's a job as well as an art form, he says, “whatever the weather, you have to put that paint onto a surface”.
Jack is too modest to say so, but signwriting is, in a sense, making history. “The past is a constant inspiration,” says Jack. “Similarly, I want my work to carry a sense of timeless quality, to show that I care about what I’m making – and ultimately, to make a beautiful sign that lasts.”
Contact Jack on www.signwritingjack.com