My Kitchen Sign
A Personal Kitchen Sign
For a while, I was obsessed with watching home renovation shows (I think my interest is finally waning, but I continue to love a good transformation). Framed signs hanging in the kitchen became quite the thing on those shows and I wanted one.
Most of these signs said things like, “FARM” or “Kitchen”, “Eats”, or “Ma’s Diner” etc. But, as an artist and someone who often tries to be different than the mainstream, I wanted my sign to be unique, maybe something more personal.
I remembered a photo my sister Sue had of my great grandfather’s horse-drawn grocery wagon with a sign on the side advertising his business. It became the inspiration for my very own “kitchen sign”.
My Great Grandfather’s Sign
I used the photo of the sign on the wagon as the basis for my sign design. Since the photo was old and out of focus, I could only follow the general layout of the original.
I found fonts on Word to assimilate those used on the original sign and printed them out in extra-large point. I then traced the text onto a chalkboard I had prepared with chalkboard paint on an old, recycled framed board.
I had made chalkboard signs before and had tried using just chalk with a sealer (so the chalk would not smudge) and using white paint pens that give the look of chalk. The sealer on the chalk never seemed to do its job so I ended up choosing the paint pens. I also designed the filigree-like ornamentation adorning the middle and corners of the sign.
Learning Family History
One of the best outcomes of this project was learning more about my great grandfather from my sister who is a genealogist. She told me my great grandfather William Fisher ran a grocery business in Glendon, Pennsylvania, a small town along the Lehigh River, north of Philadelphia.
At 18, he ran away from his home in England to America and, once in the states, he changed his last name from Woods to Fisher (my mother claimed it was because he thought it was more “American”; how that is, I’m not sure). He started working at an iron factory and in 1874, he married a widow with two young daughters who both died about ten years later.
Elizabeth (the widow) and William had a child of their own named Evelyn Hepzibah (they called her “Eppie”). Eppie was my grandmother. In the 1890s, William became a farmer, started a grocery delivery business and bought a grocery store in Easton, PA. When he retired, my grandparents, Eppie and her husband John Edinger took over the store.
I liked creating my own kitchen sign and, even better, I enjoyed learning more about my family history and my great grandfather William.