Sign Painter Hats

Sign Painters, the 2013 documentary by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, interviewed more than 50 painters aged 24 to 89 about a trade that vinyl lettering, which arrived in the early 1980s, was supposed to finish off. It did not. The film follows shops like New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco and Colossal Media's Sky High Murals in New York, and working painters on the signs101 forum still talk about squirrel hair brushes inherited from their fathers and about how hard it is to hand-paint a single letter S, then paint it again. One retailer says 1 Shot lettering enamel has been the standard for lettering and pinstriping since 1948. These sign painter hats are written in the trade's own voice. ONE SHOT and GOLD LEAF are the materials, FREEHAND PERFECT CIRCLES is the skill flag, and HAND PAINTED NOT PRINTED is the brush creed, with no claim that vinyl is shameful, since plenty of shops use both. WHAT'S A SIGN PAINTER? A PRINTER WITH FEELINGS is the joke the trade tells about itself, and IT'S NOT CROOKED THE BUILDING IS borrows the plumb-line excuse from a signs101 thread about crooked installs. SIGN PAINTER DOESN'T READ SIGNS is a phrase already in circulation as a product title in gallery and bookshop shops. Two of the lines get a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, for the painter at the bench or the one who still keeps a father's brushes.