(TNS) — Nestled in the neighborhood of Lawrenceville is a small sky blue building with a dinosaur painted on it and loud music coming from inside.
Inside is Andrew Paul, owner of Run Rabbit Gilding, who specializes in traditional sign painting, a trade that has existed for more than 100 years.
“I’ve always been obsessed with letterpress, the sort of old forms of industry, industrial output, that sort of thing, like screen printing,” he said. “Jill Welsh, a sign painter in Butler, said, ‘If you’re a human being and painting something, they’ll see your heartbeat in it.’
“I like to see and feel that sort of heartbeat.”
In Pittsburgh, a city of old buildings, traditional sign paintings are ubiquitous. We’ve all seen them: They serve as landmarks and echoes of a Pittsburgh that once was and still is. Painted street addresses on glass at cobblestones in the Mexican War Streets, South Side and elsewhere; announcements of “Cold Beer” on homes in neighborhoods including Troy Hill, where those businesses no longer exist.
Run Rabbit Gilding opened in Lawrenceville in 2016 and has produced signs for businesses all over Pittsburgh using traditional sign-painting and gold leaf techniques. Paul learned sign painting over a decade ago, when he came across the work of an artist from the 1950s who traveled across the Midwest painting signs on banks. That work inspired him to learn more.
“There aren’t that many people doing it, but there’s a good community of people that will teach it,” he said. “Ron Purcell, who makes his own chemicals and supplies, of Letterhead Signed Supply, would teach classes. His dad was a sign painter in Oakland, California, doing pinstripe. So he has a ton of knowledge to pass down. There’s also John Downer, a traditional sign painter and calligrapher, who does a lot of teaching in New York, at Cooper Union. So I’ve taken classes from him as well.”
Commissions for signs take days of preparation and work, Paul said. The cost depends on the size and style of the project and the time it will take to complete.
He first starts out drafting a design for the business, if they haven’t picked one themselves. But it can take weeks for the paint and gold leaf, made from 32 karat gold, to dry.
“I have sample plates that I bring out and go through all the different styles,” he said. “I ask, ‘What style do you like? Is there a letter or a shape of a letter you like? What about a color? Is there a type of gold that you like that we could then start from?’ Because most people don’t know all of these different techniques that we can do. Usually I push people to do bespoke lettering because that style was seen here in Pittsburgh. That style is very, very traditional.”
‘A sign that can get old and still has a beauty to it’
The remnants of the erstwhile work of sign painting are everywhere, known as “ghost signs,” fading away on buildings that now house gas stations and restaurants.
At one time, anyone could learn how to be a sign painter through trade schools and apprenticeships. But now there is only one trade school left in the country that offers sign painting, in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Trade Technical College has offered a sign design program since 1924. The two-year program focuses on traditional sign-painting techniques, design layout and graphics, said Carlos Aguilar, professor for the sign design program at LATTC. The program teaches students today the same techniques taught when the program first began, Aguilar noted.
Aguilar was also a student of LATTC’s program, graduating in 1997. He came back to the school in 2013 to teach. Emmanuel Sevilla, professor of sign design at LATTC, graduated from the sign program in 2010.
The decline of traditional sign painters across the country is a tale as old as time. With advancements in technology, the creation of signs using vinyl and computers made it easy for anyone to produce, and made the cost of traditional sign painting less appealing, Aguilar said.
“I remember being in class and we didn’t have vinyl cutters, everything was done by hand,” he said. “But when the vinyl plotters came in, a lot of people opened up businesses without having any knowledge of design. For the most part, people were happy with just getting a cheap sign, but I think people started missing the aesthetic of a hand-painted sign. So it kind of came back and people started seeing that vinyl or a digital print really doesn’t last as opposed to a hand-painted sign that can get old and still has a beauty to it.”
As to why trade schools no longer offer sign-design programs, it comes down to budget cuts, Sevilla said.
“The trade schools were very popular after World War II to give veterans a craft skill,” he said. “So sign painting was very popular.
“But now, here we are. We’re literally the last school that teaches this craft to the extent that we teach it. I think there’s something truly special about making something without automation, which we call ‘workmanship of risk.’ We’re using our hands and with that, there’s so many variations and possibilities. And that’s what’s truly special about what we do.”
One roadblock for the trade is the availability of materials, said Paul, as many of the chemicals needed have been banned in the U.S. and there is only one gold leaf producer left in the country, in Illinois.
“They’ve been instrumental in keeping the trade alive,” Paul said. “So whether it’s for sign guys, or for people that cover the sculptures on top of capitol buildings with gold, the domes or even internal ceilings, they make sure they’ve got chemicals. There are companies in Italy, in Germany and in China that have gold leaf, so luckily gold isn’t really ever hard to come by. It’s the chemicals that you need that are.”
‘A human element’
Alison Zapata, visual artist and educator at Zapata Studios, has blended the old and the new in her work as a sign painter.
“I like the creative aspect of painting murals,” Zapata said. “But I definitely appreciate and honor the tradition of sign painting because it’s a skill that takes so many years to perfect.”
Zapata, 49, grew up in Swissvale and has known since second grade that she wanted to be an artist. She pursued a degree in art and art education at Carlow University. But it wasn’t until the 2010s that she began her journey in traditional sign painting.
“I took classes online with the International Masters of Sign Painting and Design, with Joby Carter, out of the United Kingdom,” she said. “I was really reaching back to the masters of sign painting to learn the right way to do these techniques and understand the art of layout. It just really intrigued me. I found it to be fascinating. And then finally, I decided to take a leap and enroll in a live sign-painting course with Mike Myers. And he’s a sign-painting guru.”
The class was a week long in Omaha, Nebraska. There, Zapata learned the ins and outs of traditional sign painting and how to run a business, she said.
“I do go back and forth between sign painting and murals,” she said. “Most of the time, it’s a blend because a lot of murals that I do are for businesses. So the pandemic really helped me to make the leap into deepening my education and my understanding of sign painting and basically the art world.”
Since then, she has done murals and signs all over the region — including the restoration of a 40-foot tall traditional sign painting in Ford City.
But the biggest lesson learned, she said, is the importance of keeping the trade of traditional sign painting alive.
“I mean, we are so inundated with things manufactured by machines,” she said. “No matter if you’re in the store and you’re checking out your own groceries, you’re more removed from interactions with other people. And to see something that is created by hand, I think, is much more powerful. When it’s appealing, it has a human element to it and I think people can have a better connection to what’s going on inside there.”
