Six Days, 27 Brushes and a Very Useful Lesson About My Business
For six days this summer, I took over a shop on the High Street in Saffron Walden and turned it into a temporary working signwriting studio.
I had no idea what to expect. I'd planned a few projects to work on while I was there, partly so people could watch me work and partly because I assumed there would be plenty of quiet periods.
That assumption lasted about half a day.
I was nervous before opening. Excited, too, but definitely nervous. I'd stepped well outside my comfort zone and, after a difficult year for the business, there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind:
What if nobody comes in?
As it turned out, that wasn't something I needed to worry about.
The first person through the door
I was actually painting the sign for the Open Studio when the first visitors came in.
I'd deliberately decided to paint it in the window rather than arrive with a finished sign already made. I wanted people to see the process.
They stood watching for a while before I noticed them. They told me they didn't want to disturb me, so I stopped and we started chatting about what I was doing, why I was there and what AdmoSigns was all about.
They didn't buy anything or have a go themselves. And that was absolutely fine. The fact that someone had seen me painting, been curious enough to cross the threshold and then wanted to know more was already telling me something.
"Have a go"
The main thing I wanted to offer was a chance for people to try traditional signwriting for themselves.
I'd learned from previous attempts at running workshops that there is a lot to explain. So I wanted the taster sessions to be deliberately simple.
I showed people how to hold the brush and mahl stick, explained what the mahl stick was actually for, and demonstrated the basic hand position.
Then came the first brushstroke.
And almost immediately, the realisation:
This is much harder than it looks.
I encouraged everyone to practise several lines before attempting a casual letter or two, so they could see the progression for themselves.
The best part was watching the concentration.
There were tongues sticking out. People forgetting to breathe. Faces of extraordinary seriousness. People who had walked in thinking they'd casually paint a letter suddenly looked like they were performing microsurgery.
And I loved every minute of it.
Over the six days, 27 people had a go at signwriting.
The moment it really clicked
There was one particular moment that made me realise just how powerful the experience could be.
Twelve people came into the shop together. They ranged from teenagers to people in their forties, and every single one wanted to have a go. They just got on with it.
They took the brushes, concentrated, struggled, improved and laughed at themselves. It made me incredibly happy to see. Then, almost immediately after they left, three more people walked through the door. They wanted to talk about having skateboards hand-painted.
I was still running on the adrenaline of the previous group and was struggling to form a coherent sentence. I actually had to apologise for the adrenaline rush I was going through.
It was one of those moments where everything suddenly felt very real.
Then came the Vespa
One of the unexpected highlights was a Vespa being brought into the shop to have some business logos hand-painted onto it.
I loved working on it.
I positioned it in the doorway so that people walking past could easily see what I was doing.
For the final three days it sat right in the middle of the shop, effectively becoming part of the exhibition. People looked. People stopped. People asked questions.
And, most importantly, someone saw me working on it and started a conversation about having their distillery logo hand-painted onto a vintage Land Rover.
That's exactly the kind of opportunity you can't manufacture through a social media post. They saw the work happening in front of them and thought:
"I want that."
The artwork found its audience too
I sold five pieces of gilded glass artwork and two pieces of hand-painted artwork during the six days.
I wasn't surprised that people bought the work. That's why I made it. But I was particularly pleased by something else. I'd previously taken some of the artwork to events and hadn't sold them.
Putting it into a proper high-street environment made a noticeable difference.
People were already there. They could see the work in context. They could stop, look and talk to me about it. It reinforced something I've suspected for a while:
The right physical environment matters enormously when you're selling handmade work.
What I learned
The biggest lesson wasn't that people will buy my artwork. It wasn't even that people will commission me to paint unusual objects. It was that people respond to experiencing the craft.
The 27 taster sessions gave people something that Instagram can't.
They got to hold the brush.
They discovered how difficult it actually is.
They experienced the concentration required.
And they got to see that something I'd spent years learning wasn't nearly as effortless as it looked from the other side of the table.
That changes the conversation.
I'm no longer simply telling someone that traditional signwriting is a skilled craft.
I'm letting them experience it.
What happens next?
I'd love to turn some of those taster sessions into proper workshops.
There were around 10-15 people who expressed interest in coming back for a longer session.
The challenge now is finding the right format, date and group of people who are willing to commit.
The Open Studio has also given me more confidence in the idea of eventually having a permanent customer-facing workshop where I can paint, sell artwork, teach and meet clients.
I'm not rushing into that.
But I now have something I didn't have before:
"evidence".
Six days that mattered
I finished the six days feeling proud. And absolutely exhausted.
I'd stepped well outside my comfort zone and, if I'm honest, I'd been worried that this might become another failure in a year that had already contained more than enough of them.
Instead, loads of people came through the door. Way more than I could have imagined. 27 picked up a signwriting brush. Artwork sold. A skateboard commission was bought. A Vespa was painted. New vehicle commissions emerged. People asked about workshops. A designer came in to talk about future collaborations.
And, perhaps most importantly, I was reminded why I do this in the first place:
I like painting things.
I like teaching people how they're painted.
I like talking to independent businesses about what they need.
And I like seeing someone pick up a brush for the first time and realise that traditional signwriting is awesome.
Six days wasn't enough to prove exactly what the future of AdmoSigns looks like.
But it was enough to tell me that there's something worth pursuing here.
And after the year I've had, that's a pretty valuable thing to have discovered.
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