|
|
| Text and photos by Mike Jackson, Jackson Hole, WY |
|
 |
Steven Parrish's Gold Kits:
Steven was quite a character! You can tell that just by viewing the photo here. Mr. Parrish had a nice, cozy home studio in Aurora, NE, but for most jobs, he traveled to the location. Some gilders arrived to a job with Spartan materials and equipment. Not Steven Parrish! He was fully outfitted for whatever might arise on a project. Besides numerous tables, dropcloths, and so forth, he had a journeyman's stash of kits.
|
|
| Steven's old vehicle was packed to the brim, in neat order of course, with all manner of kits, tables, lights, inks, varnishes and necessary tools of the trade. The numerous photos below show his kits, along with a few additional insightful photos. |
|
 |
Gold Kit:
This kit contained the basic supplies for actual gilding, including the pan, gelatin capsules, gold, skewings, chamois, tape measure, tape and so forth. The tube contains a few brand new brushes, just in case. The blue felt roll near the bottom contains roughly a dozen razor blade holders, each with a different length broken razor blade in it for trimming gold and outlines. |
|
 |
Brush Kit:
For the most part, this kit had only brushes, a few razor blades, and a couple cans of Japan size and varnish. The Bon-Ami cake is in one of the blue cardboard boxes. Most of the cans in the lower middle section are empty, previously use orange juice cans. |
|
 |
Levels and Utility Kit:
This one seems to have been a catch all, utility kit with cutters, pencils, pens, levels, markers, punch, scissors, and a few rolls of vellum and even a pattern or two. |
|
 |
Squeegee Kit:
This kit was probably under his portable table more than out in the work area. It contained a variety of widths of squeegees in the lower section, with used tongue depressors (stir sticks), putty knife, square, and razor blades. |
|
 |
Varnish and back up paint kit
Steven told a story of him driving to Chicago to purchase the remaining supply of Commonwealth varnishes, once he found out they were changing some of the formulas. More than likely, much of that is stored in this kit. |
|
 |
| The upper carrier contained a variety of lampblack paints, japans, white lead, and similar paints. |
|
 |
| The lower section contained all varieties of Commonwealth varnishes, including Japans, Fibroseals, Venice and Florence Japans, Spar Varnish, Pale Coach, Amber Japan, and several others. |
|
 |
| Despite the huge supply of brushes in his brush kit, much of Steven Parrish's work was done on location using silk screens. He normally hand painted the original artwork, then had film positives made from those. |
|
 |
Lighting Box:
This box contained numerous lights, cords and fixtures for working into the night and in dark areas. The hand made box was also sturdy enough for him to stand on, when needed. |
|
 |
|
| The photo above shows a couple of Steven's jigs, along with a couple of spare levels, a squeegee, and his OptiVisor for close-up work. The photo below, taken by Joe Crumley at the Oklahoma Bash in 1982, shows him using one of the jigs for alignment of his "secret" vertical screen process. The darker, stained jig was created by Steven to hold his squeegee as he loaded it with ink, and then again after he pulled the screen. |
|
 |
| Steven reported he put curtains or paper in front of a door or window for many years when doing his vertical screen process. He didn't want competitors, sneaky or otherwise, to see his techniques. After the "Letterhead" bug hit grabbed him in the Summer of 1982, he showed the technique freely to all. |
|
Notes from Mike Jackson:
Not long after Mr. Parrish's death in 1987, Darla and I received a call from his son. They needed to resolve his estate and asked if we could buy his kits, samples, and some supplies. He had indicated to his wife, Marie, that he hoped we could get the items if anything happened to him. We scraped together the asking price and drove the next weekend from our home in Jackson Hole to Aurora, Nebraska. We filled our GMC Jimmy to the ceiling, but had to leave a lot of beautiful screens, documents, supplies and so forth. Most items we left probably went to the dump. The kits above, a few screens, some film positives, and many of his samples managed to come home with us. We are in the process of donating most of it to the American Sign Museum in Cincinatti, Ohio. |
|
Return to the Top of This Page
Return to the Main Page |
