Chain Letter: Vanessa Power
The enduring influence of a nineteenth century Parisian sign painter on the work of Vanessa Power.
‘Chain Letter’ invites a sign painter or lettering artist to share a piece of lettering that has influenced or inspired them, before passing the baton to someone else, in a never-ending chain.
In the last one, Meghan McDermott nominated Vanessa Power. Vanessa is an Irish sign painter, muralist, and mosaic and stained glass artist.
What have you selected?
When I first started researching signwriting, I came across the pilllpat (agence eureka) Flickr account. She had uploaded scans from a couple of French signwriting books: Lettres à l'usage du peintre (Letters for the Use of the Painter, c.1900) and Album du peintre en bâtiment (Building Painter’s Album, 1892), created by the Parisian sign painter Nicolas Glaise. They were originally produced as practical reference books for sign painters.
How did they inspire you?
I remember falling in love with the shading effects, especially the cast shadows. Those pages became my reference sheets for years and influenced so much of my work. I was fascinated by how you could create the illusion of three-dimensional letters purely with paint.
I was also amazed by how contemporary many of the alphabets still looked, despite being well over 140 years old. It made me imagine how incredible the streets of France must have looked when all of that signage was painted by hand. Even now, I still find myself going back to those pages for inspiration.
Who would you like to see next in the Chain Letter?
I'd like to pass the chain to Neil Cunningham.
Vanessa Power / signsofpower.com
Nicolas Glaise’s 1882 Album du peintre en batîment was reissued in c.1900 as Modèles de lettres sur vingt tons de fonds différents (Model Letters on Twenty Different Background Tones).
The reissue, with additional plates, is among those profiled in the Lettres Décoratives book (pictured), available here in the BLAG shop.
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