Most shop fronts in Ireland still have hand-painted signs.
John Herrick’s sign shop in Galway is down an alley next door to an instrument maker. Like most sign painters, he is also an artist and he offers art lessons.
Ma Murphy’s pub in Bantry shows the architectural setting—a fairly typical Irish facade, framed with pilasters, scroll corbels, and a dentillated cornice. 
Curving baselines, shadow lettering, and Nouveau flourishes give distinctive touches set this sign apart from cheap computer-generated plastic signs.
The illusion of dimensional lettering on a flat surface is often created with five premixed tones: light side, shadow side, dark accent, highlight, and cast shadow. Such work takes specialized brushes and brush skills, and it’s a dying art in many other countries.---------
Previously: Hand-Painted Signs (mostly North African).
There are several Flickr groups devoted to this subject:
“Hand-Painted Signs of the World.”
“Folk Typography”
“Signpaintr,” dedicated to the lost art of hand-lettering
“Hand-Painted Signs of Cambodia.”
