The Making of.. a Butcher Sign

I started this project with the desire to create an aged traditional shop sign, made with tiles. First I needed to find a good reference image to work from, which is where I stumbled across Galkoff’s Butcher Shop, a well loved Kosher Butcher in the heart of Liverpool.

Built in 1820, the shop was purchased by Percy Galkoff in 1907 and the tile frontage was made in 1933. The shop sign was well loved in its heyday, evident from scratches found on the text, from meticulous scrubbing to keep the shop front sparkling clean. Fast forward to 2018, and the shop - now boarded up and falling into disrepair - was destined for demolition. The shop became a conservation project led by Edge Conservation. After months of hard work dismantling, polishing and reconstructing the tiles one by one, Galkoff’s facade now sits safely at the Museum of Liverpool.

Image on the left: Galkoff Family Butcher facade before conservation (image from www.icon.org.uk)

Image on the Right: Galkoff Family Butcher facade after conservation on display at the Museum of Liverpool (image from www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk)

The painting process

To create this sign, first I primed the wood and painted an off-white base coat with water based emulsion. I marked out the tiles using 5mm masking tape, carefully looking at the original tile pattern as reference. I wanted to focus on the bottom right corner of the facade, where the Butcher sign was. After the masking tape was put down, I added a layer of water based clear satin varnish.

I made two tinted glazes, using the satin varnish and Rosco Super Saturated Pigment, mixed with a bit of water. One was a light green and the other a darker emerald colour. I began to lay down the glazes in a linear fashion, painting each tile individually with the brush strokes in different directions to create movement and a sense of each tile being unique.

I built these up, layer by layer, allowing the glaze to dry each time before adding the next layer. This helped create depth to the tiles, with dark and light variations showing through in the brushstrokes. I continued doing this until I was satisfied with the colour and level of depth.

Finally, I applied a couple of coats of glossy yacht varnish over the entire sign and peeled off the masking tape before the final coat had dried to uncover the off white base coat underneath. This was extremely satisfying!

I proceeded to hand paint the ‘Butcher’ text, replicating the style of the typeface found on the original facade, using One Shot enamel paint. I also added an inner shadow to help make it look as if the text was set into the tile.

Now it was time to start aging the piece! The tiles were looking lovely and shiny at this stage, but I wanted to display the sign as it would have looked later on in life. So I took to the text with some sandpaper, to create the scratches described by the conservationists. I dirtied down the whole piece with various washes, allowing the tile grout to become stained and tonal.

Finally I created the effect of tiles being water-damaged from years of rain by allowing watered-down white emulsion to run down the top of the sign, displacing it with water from a spray bottle and dabbing with a natural sponge.