stephen reynolds: sign painter

Hello!
Hope you liked our last post. I know I am looking forward to the next post in that series.

Today’s post, though, is about the gorgeous gold leaf work sign painter Stephen Reynolds did for us on the front door of Open Produce.

When the window of the front door had to be replaced, we thought it was high time to replace our address numbers, too. (Remember them? The 1+ year-old printer-paper numbers?)

After lots of late-night Googling, I found Stephen Reynolds, a sign painter fluent in a number of methods. He’s painted all over Chicago, so I am sure you’ve seen his work before (for example, the lettering of the reading room at the Art Institute), as well as New York and Berlin. You can imagine how excited I was when he agreed to gold leaf our address at a price we could afford. (Not to mention he’s worked with artist Kay Rosen, whose massive mural, part of Chicago’s Art Loop 2011, adorns the side of a building in the loop.) Gold leaf lettering has been a Chicago tradition since the 1860s, and we worked with Stephen to replicate, with an update, the original gold leaf from a window which lives in our basement.

See below for some action shots and the final result (but really, come see it in person).

See more of Stephen Reynold’s work at stephenreynolds.net.

Here’s a picture of a door we found in the basement, probably from the 1930s:

Here’s Stephen in action:

Here’s the beautiful result!