Signs and mahl sticks
I’ve never seen a sign painter doing his work, so when I walked into NEST in Pacific Heights a few weeks back I was excited to see Scott Thiessen putting on their new window lettering, all by hand. The shop owners probably weren’t enthusiastic about me interrupting him with my inane questions. Actually, Scott probably wasn’t too excited about it either. But he was gracious enough to answer a few questions from me and let me take this photograph.
I was fascinated by the stick he was holding and had never seen anything like it; I actually asked him if it was a pool queue. It’s called a mahl stick and is used by painters when doing fine detail work, preventing them from smudging the surrounding work and providing a brace of sorts. The end you can’t see is wrapped in a soft round pad so it doesn’t scratch the glass.
Scott’s amazing work is for hire, at New Bohemia Signs.
