It all started down at the pub

It is not much of a pub sign: a green bush hanging outside a Saxon hut indicating the beer was ready for drinking, but for several hundred years that’s all there was to indicate a pub.

As the country moved out of the Middle Ages and the economy began to grow in Medieval England, public houses, shops, and tradesmen’s premises began hanging tools of the trade outside to indicate what their business was. It was all becoming a bit of a muddle and clearly as the economy of 14th century Britain grew, a law was required to create the birth of the pub sign—and almost by accident the sign industry. So say ‘cheers’ to the great British boozer for helping to invent the signage industry.

Brewers began it

In 1393 Richard II established a law that enforced pub landlords (who were also brewers) to put up pub signs outside their establishments stating that: “Whosoever shall brew ale in the town with intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.” The signs were very helpful for passing travellers but also for the newly created official ale tasters and tax inspectors. With this revolutionary concept established, all shops and stores began to advertise themselves with signs that were usually depictions of their trade or their name. The Plough Inn, The Red Lion, and The White Hart are names that live on centuries later. And with increasing literacy also came fonts of the typefaces we now recognise in signs such as Gothic and Roman—even if many of the words were in Latin and French at first.

So it appears signage and signwriting all began above the portals of Plantagenet alehouses. Fitting, in a way, as one traditional sign-writer called Alan Taylor began his career when walking his dog to a pub for a pint of English ale.

Walking the dog

Taylor takes up the story: “It was one day when I was walking along with the dog when I looked up at an old pub sign near Hemel Hempstead; the White Hart. It was in a sorry state. I looked at it and the penny dropped and I thought someone’s got to paint that, and I thought, I could do that.”



He went in, ordered a pint and as he sipped his ale he looked up at the sign and wondered how to get into sign-writing. A few days later Taylor found himself at a social function with his wife. He says: “A week later we were at a dinner party and the owner of the Greyhound pub in Aldbury was sat next to my wife. She said to him, ‘My husband wants to paint pub signs.’ He replied saying that if Alan painted his pub sign for free then he would introduce him to the surveyors.”

Taking him at his word, Taylor went down to the pub, took the measurements, bought some paints and set to work on his first ever pub sign. What he hadn’t appreciated at the time was the apparently closed loop in which the brewery’s contracts were locked into. The pub was owned by the brewery firm and they employed surveyors who then commissioned work for contractors every three years or so when the owners revamped and refitted the pubs.



So to get into the loop took quite a lot of effort, but slowly the commissions came in as the quality of his work was revealed. And painting that first sign was only the beginning, as to Taylor’s dismay, local sign-makers in Hemel Hempstead were not keen on divulging their trade secrets to the young upstart.

He says: “I had to learn all the techniques bit by bit as nobody would tell me. For that first pub sign I painted I used ordinary exterior plywood, but learnt later that sign-makers actually used birch faced plywood from a manufacturer of sheet plywood. And later I found a manufacturer that sold a product which gives a very dense and hard finish on plywood and I learnt that if I used automotive primers it would dry very fast.”


Taylor also reveals that it really was a steep learning curve when he started out: “I knew how to paint, but I didn’t know how to do the lettering and how to do gold leaf. Everything was gold leaf with Bensons, even their lowly car park signs were gilded.

“Getting the lustre on the gold right is the hardest. In the old days I was doing it the traditional way with goldsize, and then I went to see a guy wrote a book on sign-writing and actually went all the way to London to speak to him as the local sign-writers wouldn’t tell me how to do it because they were afraid I’d take their business.

“He told me that nobody bothers uses goldsize anymore when they’re doing pub signs because time’s money and they just use sign-writing enamels. He also advised that it’s just a matter of waiting for just the right moment for the enamel to go off and then you apply the gold—it was a short cut really.”

It is these shortcuts and trade secrets that have vanished from across the industry and are now hoarded by just a few like Taylor. Rather than hold onto them, though, he is keen to pass on his knowledge to another generation.

Despite having done hundreds of commissions over the years he still remembers those early days: “The Saracens Head was a special one, I knew there was a history behind it. The Saracen when he was painted was painted to look as fierce looking as possible because that meant our victory over them was greater.



“There was no internet then so I went to the library to find books and photographs and an image and cobble it together and I found a picture of a fierce looking Arab and a picture of turbans in another book. And another picture of a dagger that might have been worn at the time and made it up. It was the first one I did with an airbrush, then later on I actually started to realise I could get a faster drying varnish that wouldn’t. I also started using traditional paints you would use on things like canvas, because you could get the colours much finer and I could paint much quicker. I took to that like a duck to water.”

Interest in art and design

After leaving school Taylor had wanted to become a trainee or sign-maker’s apprentice but there weren’t any openings, although he was keen on art and technical drawing and it was into that world he initially worked.

Similarly Wayne Osborne of Midhurst in Sussex was also keen on art and drawing at school, but fortunately when he left to join the adult world in 1993 he had a mentor in a local sign-writer called Don Hickey who helped him in his early days. However Osborne became self-employed as a sign-writer straight away and has remained in business ever since.



He says: “At school I was keen on the old-fashioned subject of technical drawing and graphic design on paper and it’s where I started to use air brushes and doing layouts. That’s really where I developed my skills which I used in signwriting.”

Ironically perhaps for someone who has never been formally trained, Osborne now runs training courses in traditional signwriting at his workshop with one day sessions for those interested in the skills or just want to experience something that is an ancient form of art.

He says on his website that he is regularly contacted by individuals who want to learn more about hand lettering and the art and craft of sign-writing. As the website reads, the courses give practical tuition to: “Beginners, hobbyists, schools groups, and even a paint technician from Rolls-Royce motor cars.”

Signwriting class

Osborne explains the need behind the courses he provides: “There is a need out there as the colleges have all kind of fallen away with providing courses. Possibly because there’s nobody out there to teach signwriting full-time but there certainly is a demand for it, especially for people who have an interest in hand lettering.


“The kind of people I’m getting through the classes are not the sort who want to be a signwriters as a trade.  They are graphic designers or type designers or people who have an interest in it. Nobody has come through and said, ‘I want to come and be a signwriter’ or had a previous need for it because it’s within their trade. Students tend to be printers working with letterpress or ordinary graphic designers who want to get away from the clip art machine and use signwriting within their own work again.



“I’ve one guy now who makes fonts and he was very interested to get back to basics. He’ll start to do that, then he’ll hand paint something and then go back and digitise it. I had another guy who all he wanted to do was put his own signature to his own boat that he was making. He was the kind of guy who would cut the tree down if he could and do everything. He wasn’t taking work away from anyone, he just wanted that in his arsenal.”

Practical tips

So how does a traditional sign-writer work? What skills are needed for this most ancient of skills? Osborne gives an insight. He says: “A steady hand is essential and an eye for design and colour and spacing. You’ll see us working with a stick with a ball on the end, that’s what we lean on. It’s like a bridge or a rest, and the ball end stays on the area you’re working on so your hand is above the surface.”



Osborne says that when vinyl came in a lot of signwriting went over to the new technology, although now traditional hand lettering and artwork is making a comeback with clients who are seeking a unique bespoke finish. In the old days he would paint quite mundane signs in bulk, but now he would refer those type of jobs to a vinyl sign-maker or a wide-format printer. But referrals are important—as is the internet.

He concludes: “If you do a nice job at one place, everyone wants to know who did it. And also the internet is very good as it is so search specific whereas before where you were all lumped in the Yellow Pages with everyone, and it was kind of pot luck as to whether you got a traditional signwriter or a plastic sign-maker. So now if someone is specifically searching for a traditional signwriter they can find one very easily.

O Factoid: 1393: Richard II passed a law making pub signs mandatory. O

“What being a signwriter has taught me is an understanding of aesthetics, and that really in the past signwriters did know what they were doing.  They knew it was important to get the message across. There’re a lot of people who come into the business who are not graphic designers or signwriters, they slap a load of graphics on a van and someone goes away and they’ve got their name on the van and does it really look good? A good signwriter will look at it and say to the client this is the best way of doing it—keep it short and sweet and colourful and eye-catching. That really is the best way of doing it.”



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