SignLink - February / March 2024 - Issue 251

Meet the Letterheads: Keeping the Craft Alive Around the world, gatherings of sign painters have been happening informally since 1975. These Letterheads ‘meets’ play an important role in passing skills from one generation to another, and fostering a culture of mutual support within the trade. Ten years ago this March, I was greeted at Minneapolis airport by temperatures of -16oc and a man with a fox on his head – ‘wear the fox hat’, as they say. That man was Mike Meyer, and I was visiting America for the first time to attend his Mazeppa Mardi Gras Letterheads meet. At the time, I didn’t know what to expect, nor that the trip would change my life. Letterheads Meets The origins of the Letterheads movement were a series of gatherings of sign painting apprentices in Denver, Colorado, in the mid-1970s. To this day, its lifeblood remains those that are relatively new to the trade, with the broad aim of sharing knowledge, skills, and time with other like-minded craftspeople, invariably accompanied by liquid and other refreshments. Letterheads ‘meets’ (the correct term for these gatherings) can vary in size and format, from a few people getting together in a sign shop over a couple of beers, through to multi-day events with hundreds of international guests. There is no fixed itinerary for a meet, although one of the staples is the ‘panel jam’. This is simply people painting small signs and panels without the usual pressure of client work. The results are often humorous and creative and are swapped with others, or sold at a charity auction at the end of the meet. Other elements can include short workshops; formal and informal technical demonstrations; collaborative projects such as murals; and things like talks, screenings, and local sign-spotting walks. An Anarchic Organisation Hosting a meet is a voluntary undertaking and this approach has endured for nearly 50 years with hundreds of events taking place around the world over that time. This is a remarkable achievement for what I have dubbed an ‘anarchic organisation’, In this month’s Sign Painting Corner column, Sam Roberts tells us about the Letterheads group and how its sense of community and skills sharing is keeping the art of sign painting alive ▼ Panel jamming and screenprinting in full swing at the 2019 Tokyo Letterheads meet. Photo: RIO / @ rioyamamoto Sam Roberts is the editor and publisher of BLAG (Better Letters Magazine), the world’s only print and online publication dedicated to sign painting. He has written numerous books and articles on the craft and its history, and first became interested in the topic via the fading ‘ghost’ signs around London. SignLink subscribers can sign up with a special discount to the publication via bl.ag/signlink as articulated in this segment from a Signs of the Times article by original Letterhead, Mart Oatis: “It’s important that a formal organisation – with officers, dues, etc. – is never made of the Letterheads. As long as things remain somewhat spontaneous, dependent upon individual effort and participation, things will remain fun. Give it a president and collect dues, and it becomes an establishment to rebel against… and sign artists are a typically rebellious lot, anyway.” Going Global Oatis was writing in 1985 on the tenth anniversary of the movement’s origins, and by that point it had spread across the US and Canada. By the 1990s, meets were happening outside of North America, including Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK. (Those in Australia and New Zealand ADVENTURES IN SIGN PAINTING WITH SAM ROBERTS 44 Issue 251 - February / March 2024 www.signlink.co.uk

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