Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Signwriter left evidence of his mastery over city’s buildings
TRADITIONAL signwriter Stewart Hutchison left his creative mark on many shops and pubs in Dundee during an illustrious career.
Stewart’s work is etched into the fabric of the city, including the famous Land o’ Cakes mural on the gable wall of the old Wallace’s bakery on Dura Street.
For decades the sign has been a famed Dundee landmark, and a nod to the past after the bakery closed.
Until now, little has been known about the man who painted the mural.
But Stewart’s work was not limited to buildings. He also handled projects from ice cream vans to lorries and even boats.
He could paint signage in reverse on glass and was a skilled artist who sketched from an early age, with some of his paintings of street scenes in watercolours still adorning the walls of family members and others to this day.
Stewart learned his craft after the Second World War, at a time when there were painted signs everywhere in Dundee.
The old methods of setting out and sketching letters by hand is now rare, having been written off as a trade of the past.
Signs can now be made of vinyl and stuck where needed, a new technology that hollowed out the industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
Stewart, however, would mark the centre line and snap in chalk lines for the top and bottom of the main lettering before getting to work with his brush.
Born in 1908 in Caldrum Street, he was the oldest of six children in a family that saw tragedy with the deaths of two of his sisters.
Florence was a year old when she died and Susan later passed away aged 31 in India where Dundee jute workers moved for a better life.
Stewart started out as a painter and decorator and married Christina Farquharson in 1930, then served as a Royal Navy gunner in the Second World War.
His service was recognised with the 1939-45 Star, Atlantic the Wallace’s Land o’ Cakes mural because when we’re long gone that knowledge will go with us.
“People often ask about the sign because it is so well-known and I think it’s important for his work to be recognised 30 years after his death.
“It was amazing to watch my father at work because he was so quick and accurate and his signwriting was history in the making.”
Preserving and interpreting historic painted wall signs like Wallace’s Land o’ Cakes are a challenge for preservation planners as they often endured longer than the businesses and products they promoted.
Stewart’s son Jack said his father was completely at ease whatever the job and the family are proud of his role in painting the city’s heritage.
“These signs sometimes became landmarks in themselves,” he said. “The Wallace’s Land o’ Cake sign is a prime example of that.”
Iain Flett from the Friends of Dundee City Archives said: “The Wallace’s Land o’ Cakes gable end sign at Eliza Street is one I used to enjoy daily when I walked home to my flat in Stobswell.
“It looks deceptively simple but took a lot of skill to create.
“Firstly, like scenery in theatre productions, it had to look crisp from a distance, which means the artist had to use techniques such as scumbling and spattering for that distance visual effect.
“The skill to enhance a distance visual effect was also used by the Dundee woodcarvers who used to carve ships’ figureheads and was a skill lost in the 19th Century.
“The calligraphy of creating the letters was another skill and when I came to Dundee in 1976 there were still painters who would add the final touch of painting a tenement close number after a close refurb.
“What sounds like a simple job wasn’t – they would quietly with gilding and paint create a number that would be distinctive, artistic and would weather decades of Scottish rain and wind.
“The scaling and angle of the lettering of Wallace’s Land o’ Cakes had to be a difficult challenge.
“Whereas nowadays signwriting