Date Plaque

Letter Carving

A small commission to carve lettering into a blank plaque – left blank since the house was built. The trouble was that the person commissioning it was an old-school graphic designer. I studied graphics and was massively into typography and calligraphy. Back then computers were coming in but were dreadfully slow, so it was right on the cusp of the old analogue world and a new digital one. Typesetters whose job it was to put the type and images together from vinyl print outs and paste onto a board using Cow Gum, and then sent of to the printers. We used to hand render type too, using ultra-fine Rotring pens, and while this may all seem a little mad in the 21st century, you really got to know the difference between Helvetica and Univers, Caslon and Baskerville.

Altering type

Bearing this in mind, I also had to alter the type to make the thinner parts of the numbers thicker in order to catch the light – so they didn’t disappear on a dull day. I was very aware the client knew the typeface inside out, and was rather nervous that the negative shapes of the letterforms had to be spot on.

The Plaque

The rest of the house had been renovated and the painted pebble-dash removed from the exterior. The plaque was still covered in many layers of paint which I removed, then I applied the template and altered the numbers in-situ and carved.

Thankfully the client was overjoyed with the results saying it was everything he could have hoped for!