Blackletter alphabet flash sheet

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A sheet of 26 uppercase letters drawn in an ornate blackletter style, arranged in a grid on a plain light background. The letters have heavy black strokes, grey shading on their edges and curling decorative flourishes that extend beyond each letterform. The sheet is entirely monochrome and evenly spaced, with each letter given equal room.

Lettering Alphabet Letter Blackletter Flourishes

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Wilf had been painting shop fronts in Hull for thirty-one years, and the sheet of capitals his master left him was the only thing in the workshop that had not gone yellow. Twenty-six letters, each one black and heavy, each trailing curls like a dog's ears in the wind. He pinned it above the bench under the strip light and told himself he would copy the A for the bakery on Cottingham Road and be done by Friday.

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The trouble started with the A. Every time he laid gold leaf along its hairline, the flourish ran a fraction further than his pencil guide allowed, curling past the edge of the board and up towards the light. He scraped it off twice. The third time the flourish held, and the next morning the bakery read ANNA'S in letters that seemed to lean towards the street, as if listening. Customers stopped to look, then stopped to go in.

By autumn he had painted eleven signs from the sheet, and eleven businesses had prospered in ways nobody could quite explain. A hardware shop sold out of stock it had never ordered. A barber's chairs filled before the shutter went up. A launderette on Spring Bank never lost a sock again. Wilf began to dread the Z. He kept it for last, the way his master had, and when at last he reached it the flourish swept so wide it touched the A on the sheet, and the two letters seemed to take hands.

He painted no sign for it. He folded the sheet along its crease, slid it into the drawer with the sable brushes and turned the key. The next morning the Z was waiting on the bench, its long tail curled neatly round the key, and the drawer was still locked.