A visit to an ice-cream shop should feel like a trip back in time. Enjoying a scoop over a marble tabletops inside a slightly chilly, brightly colored room while seated on padded, wrought-iron chairs has been a childhood rite of passage for generations. Considering this, gilded window graphics provide a perfect ice-cream-parlor adornment. When Somerville, MA-based Forge Baking Co., a bakery and sandwich shop, decided to begin selling ice cream earlier this year, they hired Jamaica Plain, MA-based Best Dressed Signs to bedeck its fenestrations. Best Dressed co-owners Josh Luke and Meredith Kasabian prepped the surface for the 22 x 12.5-in. graphic with Bon Ami cleaning cakes and Windex. They created tack by applying water-dissolved gelatin size, which was dabbed on with a mop brush.
They rendered the sign’s design from a client-supplied Adobe Illustrator® file. The elegant gild comprises 13.25k looseleaf surface white gold from W & B Goldleaf that’s applied with a gilder’s tip. The duo razor-trimmed the letters to shape, and blocked them in with Letterhead Sign Supply’s gilder’s backup black paint that’s applied with Luco lettering quills. To heighten the letters’ sheen, they applied Man O’ War maritime-grade spar varnish.
To the saying “We all scream for ice cream!”, Beantown dip devotees may now add, “Let’s gorge at Forge!”