posted
I was at a estate sale a while back. I bought a really wooden nice easel for 5 bucks. And along with that I bought a home-made mahl stick for 25 cents. After I paid for the stuff, I showed the lady the malh stick. I asked her do you know what this is for. She looked at it and said "No". I told her it was a home made malh stick. I showed her how it was used for keeping your hands off the work doing hand lettering or painting details on a big wet canvas.
-------------------- Signs by Alicia Jennings (Mudflap Girl) Tacoma, WA Since 1987 Have Lipstick, will travel. Posts: 3845 | From: Tacoma, WA. U.S.A. | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
So we don't lose track of our history, a mahlstick had more uses that just keeping your hands off the work. I never mastered the use of a mahlstick, but in the hands of a master signwriter, the mahl stick was used in one hand, with the other hand resting on the stick, and using the fingers of the lettering hand, to keep the brush at just the correct height from the surface and used to apply pressure in the middle of a stroke. Most of you will never be able to watch someone properly use a mahlstick, but the greatest signwriters that I have ever seen used a mahlstick in a sweeping, flowing manner that I find hard to describe. Long before vinyl machines and fonts, the ONLY place you could getting flowing spencerian script and delicate Roman lettering was a master signwriter. I name two of them here to pay homage, Russell Hunter, and Doug Price, both from Florida. To see the work that they put out would truly leave you in awe of the perfection of the stroke that they produced. This will be lost in history, because no one will ever take the time to apprentice as these men had to do to achieve that quality. As I said, I never could use a mahlstick in the way that they did, but I sure appreciated their talent.
-------------------- Bob Nugent Hotrodsonline.com Gainesville, GA 30506 hotrod@hotrodsonline.com Posts: 46 | From: Gainesville, Georgia | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Bob, lots of us watched Pat King and his mahl stick for endless hours. He told me that he had been told on more than one occasion by other signwriters that it was a "crutch". He encouraged others to use one.
I have 2 home mades and the "Royal Shaft"
-------------------- Kathy Joiner River Road Graphics 41628 River Road Ponchatoula, La.70454
Old enough to know better...Too young to resist. Posts: 1891 | From: Ponchatoula, LA | Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic