Heidi Howard - Yesterday’s Signs are Today’s Business

By Randall Decoteau

Heidi Howard working in her Eastford, CT, studio.
Photo courtesy Jen Dean Brown Photography,
Woodstock, CT.

I knew about Eastford, Connecticut. A cute little Windham County town in the northeast corner of Connecticut, it’s near Pomfret, Thompson, and close to the Massachusetts border. Eastford is best known for the first Ford dealership in the country, which is still in operation.
Maples line the five roads radiating out from the center and there isn’t much more to see than a post office, a general store, and a cabinetmaker’s shop. The historic district has wonderful early houses that haven’t much changed over the years. The 1600 inhabitants are pretty much like they were in the days of horse and carriages. Everybody knows everybody and their day-to-day business.
Heidi Howard’s 1780 Cape, with pumpkin clapboards and pleasing off-red trim, was easy to find just a few steps from the center of town. She met me out front and walked me down the gravel path into her barn red studio with French doors that opened to her herb garden.
The interior was nice and cool, and only about 16 by 20 feet. There were signs everywhere, as anyone might expect. At first glance, I saw power tools like a circular saw, a jigsaw, and lots of hand tools on the walls. To one side lay a stack of early boards waiting to be painted. Many already had well-weathered painted finishes.
“I have a large container of hand cut nails,” Heidi told me as I noticed the box. “I’m always on the lookout for them at yard sales. These are what I use to hold together my signs, making them as authentic as possible.”

Making the New Look Old
Laid out on her worktable was the sign she was working on for the Camden Shipbuilding and Railway Company. It was large, about nine inches high and nine feet long. The shipyard today houses a marina, and the sign was being made for the present general manager’s office. How nice it was, I thought, for a 200-year old company to remember its past.
The large board had already been planed and cut to shape and it had a good painted surface.
“If a board already has good surface, I keep it,” she told me, “but much of the time, I have to manipulate the surface so that it’s appropriate for the effect I need.”
Heidi admitted that sometimes it requires using all sorts of toxic ooze to get the board the way she wants it.
“We’re trying to make something here that looks old,” Howard explained. “So the prep is really aesthetic.”
She described the feeling you get when you find a great piece at an antiques show and it relates to you personally.
“I hope that when my customer sees that crusty old paint, they will have the same feeling,” she enthused. “We’re re-creating their ancestry for them, but all the same, it’s for the sake of aesthetics.”

Getting ready for a show – the exterior of Heidi’s studio.

Heidi at Work
Heidi bent over the simple eight-foot worktable that sat in the center of an old checkerboard floor cloth on the studio floor. Though a reproduction cloth, the wear was terrific. She selected a brush from a large pot, leaving the others standing upright.
“I use a lot of paints,” she told me, “but I like to use mostly water based paints.”
My eyes wandered to the shelving on the back wall with dozens of cans of paint verifying her statement. In one corner stood a large selection of antique moldings used to finish off her signs. She told me that whenever possible, she used old wood rather than new.
On this particular sign, the entire background was done in gold wash. Then she drew the letters onto the background without using stencils. Heidi uses a square and a ruler to draw in the letters. She always tries to use age-appropriate fonts. She told me that some of the eighteenth-century signs look funny because of excessive punctuation, all part of the effort to keep them authentic.
On this sign, the letters are reversed out of the background. Each sketched outline is painted around, leaving the gilt background to show as the body of the letter. She was using black sand paint that she mixed herself. She grinned as she told me it wasn’t just sand, but a secret recipe. It was made to produce a shiny black that had a reflective quality. The gold letters emerging from the black field were very dramatic.
“This is a simple sign that’s meant to quietly describe only a business name,” she explained.
Tavern signs are different. Generally, there is an image as well as lettering. Sometimes the figure can be political – like eagles or a rising sun. Other signs might show a punch bowl, grape leaves, or an animal – or maybe even a horse and carriage. Signs incorporating these are more complex and take longer than the usual two or three days to make.
In period, signs had to be big enough to be seen easily when riding by in a stagecoach, and Heidi loves working on large signs. She recently worked on a 13-part History Channel television series on the American Revolution that is soon to be aired on the History Channel. She created 17 full sized signs for this production and would like to work on more period films. She told me that it was a joy to work on this project.

The Creative Urge
Heidi said that these signs are absolutely not outdoor signs. They are intended for decorative use only, so she uses no fixatives or glazes.
“Which leads me to say, I consider myself to be a folk artist and not really a sign painter,” Howard leans forward and fixes her gaze on me. “My art simply takes the shape of trade and tavern signs. It’s a combination of my art background, my love of painted antiques, and an urge to create using my hands.”
She continued in a soft, steady tone that still revealed enthusiasm for her work. “It’s like I put it all into a blender and something I really like emerges.”
She admits that she has to give a nod to her mother, who has always been an inspiration because she taught her to trust her hands. She taught that if you can join two pieces of fabric together, you can sew; if you can bang with a hammer and cut with a saw, you can build; and if you put together ingredients that complement each other, you can have a fine meal. Heidi tells that this whole notion carries into her work today.
She’s also excited about doing craft shows and will be doing the MCG Craft Show at Strawberry Banke on August 18 and 19. She is also thrilled that her Website is working well.
“It’s really a good place to be right now,” she said of her life and work.
For further information, contact Heidi Howard at P.O. Box 112, Eastford, CT 06242, call (860) 974-3979, or visit www.heidihoward.com.