Hand Carved Signs

The "Bas Relief " or flat carving on signs is the most common carving we do. Sculpting in full 3d usually won't work for signs, as the full blown hand carved piece would overwhelm the sign.

As the copy or text of the sign itself is the important item, we most often will stick to a simple 3d carving of minimal thickness to portay the flower or what ever is required. 

If you have one of our signs with a carving on it please photograph it and send it to us as we don't have many photographs especially of pieces we have carved for house or home signs.

The Cameo Lady to the left was hand carved into a piece of HDU, then a mold was made and the cameo was cast.

Very often simple is what's needed 

Very often when we are carving a piece for a sign or hand painting a picture on a sign we don't want too much detail. If your sign is going next to your door or entrance to your office, it's fine to have a beautifully painted or hand carved piece for your sign. It will be viewed from close up by people standing still or walking slowly and it will have their undivided attention even if only for a few moments. That is enough for them to appreciate it.

However if the hand carved or hand painted sign is going on a drive or out at the street as most signs do, especially business or shop signs; then too much detail will not be appreciated or even noticed. At five MPH a driver will do no more than give a cursory glance at your sign (he or she is thinking of much more important things like not driving into your flower bed).

At 15-20 MPH fine detail are unnoticeable and over 25 it is just a grey blur which can look awful. Its our job as your sign consultant to find out where the sign is going and how fast the traffic will be going past it, then we can calculate the size of the letters needed to get your message to the appropriate parties.

So when too much detail will be working aganist you, we simplify the design; sometimes to the point where we have almost a characterization of the image; (see the fruit to the right) it may look a little unreal when standing in front of the carved sign but at 40MPH it will look great and it will be recognised for what it is.