You can date a shopfront by its signage the way you can date a tree by its rings. The oldest survivors still carry hand-painted letters, slightly uneven, unmistakably made by a person who cared how the word looked.
We walked the length of the market district counting them. Eleven years ago an informal survey found forty-three hand-lettered signs. This month we found nine.
What is lost with the last brush
The signs disappear for good reasons: printed vinyl is cheaper, faster, and weathers better. But something goes with them that no printer reproduces.
- The way a price scrawled in chalk signals that the price might be negotiable.
- The small pride of a spelling mistake left uncorrected for a decade.
- The evidence, plain on the glass, that a human being stood here and made a choice.
None of this is an argument against progress. It is an argument for noticing what leaves quietly, before we are surprised to find it gone.
Related: the disappearing phone boxes · The Working Day
Further reading: The craft of sign painting
