⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 3–4 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Hardcover binding takes longer than paperback. Please allow 3–4 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

E. C. Matthews' 1920 How to Paint Signs and Sho' Cards is the beginner's door into the trade — 102 pages that take the complete novice from the first brush stroke to finished signs and show cards. Matthews wrote for the man who wanted to learn sign painting on his own: the book starts with materials and brush handling, builds the basic alphabets stroke by stroke, and works up through layout, spacing, and the complete sign, with show-card work alongside as the second string to the beginner's bow.

The 1920 date makes it a friendly book for the modern self-taught painter. The instruction is plain, progressive, and encouraging — the correspondence-course manner at its best — and the letterforms are the straightforward commercial alphabets of the 1920s, the honest working hands rather than the virtuoso display styles. A beginner who works through Matthews' 102 pages will have real, usable lettering skill at the end.

For the sign-painting revival, a 1920 beginner's manual is gold: period-correct fundamentals without the intimidation of the master-level texts. For lettering students, it is the complete first course — brush, paint, alphabet, layout — in one compact volume.

The self-teacher's sign-painting book from 1920. For beginning sign painters, lettering students, and anyone learning the trade on their own.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), 102 pages, black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1920 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1920 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1920 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.