Field Notes

Field Notes from BLAG: September 2026

Eat Carnation Mush, sign painting in Vietnam, the stories of colours, and more from the field.

Better Letters

• 6 min read
Field Notes from BLAG: September 2026
David Mearns, back on the brush at 50, from my latest Signlink column.

Welcome back to Field Notes, my periodic member-only email with things of interest that I come across in my research and meanderings on the worldwide web. You can share your own discoveries for future issues via email to sam@bl.ag.

Contents

In this edition:

  1. BLAG on The Life of Letters.
  2. Ye Olde Sign Shoppe: Seelander & Swanson.
  3. Ghost Sign Corner: Carnation Mush.
  4. Tony Lewery: Signwriting Folk Art
  5. Lettering Location: Warsaw’s Neon Muzeum.
  6. Press Gang, featuring Bungo Sign Co., Rich Carter, Jérémy Raucq, and more.
  7. Mid-Century Script Lettering.
  8. Veteran Painter Donnie Carter.
  9. Ohno Type School.
  10. Sundries, including lettering on leaves, the stories of colours, and some wise words.

Field Notes: September 2026

BLAG on The Life of Letters

I’m on a podcast. Photo: Natalie Grilli.

I was delighted to be invited onto The Life of Letters podcast where I talked with Laura Edralin about BLAG, books, and the joy of print. Listen to the episode here, check out all the other bookish contributions from Season 6, and subscribe for future seasons. The segment on designing BLAG in collaboration with UTILE was also picked out for the YouTube video clip.

The Magic of Print on YouTube.

Ye Olde Sign Shoppe: Seelander & Swanson

John Marshall Seelander. Photo: John Marshall Seelander III / SignCraft.

There are some lovely photos in this SignCraft story about this influential Chicago sign painting firm. For more on the firm’s contemporaries, the Beverly Sign Co., and the Chicago style, check out The Golden Era of Sign Design and the associated article in BLAG 06.

Ghost Sign Corner: Carnation Mush

Eat Carnation Mush at 575-579 Columbus, San Francisco.

There was much excitement in San Francisco in June with the reveal of a wonderful Eat Carnation Mush ghost sign. To put this into context, Kasey Smith posted this definitive guide to San Francisco’s Carnation Mush ghost signs.

In other ghost signs news: a recent reveal in Bristol, UK — Hewett’s Stores — was swiftly painted over, much to the dismay of locals; retouched ghost signs are the last survivors of the Cunningham piano-making heritage in Philadelphia; and, in Dutch, here’s a tour of six ghost signs in Lieden.

Tony Lewery: Signwriting Folk Art

From Signwriting Folk Art: As Much Mood as Message by Tony Lewery.

For the entire month of September 2026, Letter Exchange have made their lecture recordings completely free to access. There are dozen to learn from and enjoy, but I wanted to highlight Tony Lewery’s from 3 October 2021: Signwriting Folk Art: As Much Mood as Message. You’ll need to scroll down the recordings page to the required date and then go through a checkout process to watch it, but I highly recommend you do so.

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While his brilliant Flowers Afloat is out of print, I do stock two of Tony’s other wonderful publications in the BLAG Shop: Signwritten Art is a detailed historical account of the craft and its practise in the UK, while The Art of the Narrowboat Painters is more tightly focused on that particular tradition.

Lettering Location: Warsaw’s Neon Muzeum

One of the galleries in the new home of the Neon Muzeum in Warsaw. Photo: Neon Muzeum.

The ‘Lettering Location’ column in BLAG started life as an online map, which in turn serves as my ‘bucket list’ of places around the world that I’d like to visit. I recently migrated the map from Google to uMap, which you can browse here.

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