Jan 082015
 
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Sodtherich - handmade wooden sign

Width: 100cm

Wetministers - handmade wooden sign

Width: 67.5cm

Sodtherich (detail) - handmade wooden sign

Notice the handfinished paintwork and the slight undulating surface of the wood

Method

I’ve had the idea to make replicas of the LUT signs, just like they do as a (costly) bespoke service they used to offer this at the museum shop. The Sodtherich anagram was designed back in the middle of 2010 now… With the addition of Wetministers that I launched at Moniker Art Fair in 2013 (I wish I went with Westmonster). The signs are cut out as a single chunk from a sheet of High Density Fibreboard. This wood gave a good, workable finish, with fewer fibres visible than medium density MDF. The insets were then routed out 12mm into the form, leaving a raised trim border at the edge. I cleaned the trim and reformed into sharper corners, using a scalpel and filler paste.

I primed the woodwork with several layers of matte white primer and left it to cure before adding the planes of colour. I had to devise a future-friendly method of masking the areas with painter’s tape, so the first overpainted colour to put down was the trim’s grey. Their walls were masked again to reveal the flat pools for the red (or orange in the case of the over ground Sodtherich), white & then blue.

A 45° batten on the reverse enabled a strong fixing to the serving wall.

I will produce only 5 of each size in each design –

Build process gallery