⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 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. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

A. Ashmun Kelly's 1922 The Expert Sign Painter is the working trade manual from the golden age of sign painting — 224 pages of real shop knowledge, back in print. Kelly wrote for the journeyman who had to do it all: gold-leaf gilding on wood and glass, mixing and judging oil size by tack, water gilding for mirror finishes, the old smalt method — crushed-glass backgrounds from before smalt cream existed — sign paints and color mixing for outdoor work, lettering-brush selection and care, glass etching and embossing, and the day-to-day practice of the 1922 sign shop.

The kind of book that earns its shelf space. 'Legibility is the first requirement of a business sign' — Kelly wrote that in 1922, and it hasn't gotten any less true. Every chapter carries the authority of a man who painted for a living: the gilding instructions assume you will actually lay leaf, the color-mixing chapters assume your work has to survive weather, and the brush chapters treat tools as a workingman's capital.

For the modern sign painter, Kelly's 1922 manual is the deep background — the complete trade as it was practiced at its peak, before the old methods began to disappear. For gilders, the glass-gilding and water-gilding chapters are period authority; for restorers, the book explains the original work from the inside. And for every letterer, it is simply one of the great books of the craft.

The masterwork of the 1920s sign trade. For sign painters, gilders, and everyone building a serious trade library.

Details: 6×9" paperback, 224 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This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document.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 1922 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 1922 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 1922 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.