The mural never goes out of fashion
Looking at some of the custom show scooters at Whitby, it struck me that murals are back this year – as popular as ever.
The extensive surface area of scooters has always meant there’s plenty of space for artists and creative types to explore. Murals can be very much a love/hate thing but certainly a well-executed mural can be jaw dropping. There are some very famous airbrush artists who over the years have done some incredible work on show-winning scooters. Sometimes the murals are simply there in their own right on a scooter, sometimes they are intrinsically linked to the overall design of the paint job. Sometimes they can be (very) controversial, some are totally original, some are copies of published pictures simply reapplied, sometimes they are cute while some are used as a set to tell a whole story. The use of murals has been a constant throughout the scooter customisation story and is certainly showing no signs of going away.
A personal favourite of mine that has stood the test of time in every way is Sign of the Snake which was both original and incredibly well executed in great colours on a Lambretta. Recently we have seen some original murals being recreated or updated – Dazzle springs to mind as a very influential scooter that has been recreated. We are even seeing modern interpretations and twists on age-old themes, often considered classics. Check out the ‘Lens of Shipley’ style on the Vespa featured in this month’s mag for one such example.
Back in the 1980s, one of my favourite scooters was a Lambretta Vega called Bitter Fingers that had some terrific murals, and when I bought a new GP200 from Lens of Shipley they had one of their Dealer Special Vespas with a mural of a classic British Bulldog, that was always another I loved.
I once witnessed a pretty heated ‘discussion’ about murals that were on scooters, but which had absolutely nothing remotely to do with the scooter scene. I think the guy who was criticising them was totally missing the purpose and point of customisation. People have always customised scooters so that they have a machine that looks exactly like THEY want it to look. If someone wants Guns N’ Roses murals or the Alice in Wonderland story then that’s totally down to them, isn’t it? Although, and at the risk of being controversial, I’m still in puzzlement at the AJS Modena I saw fully covered in murals of Innocenti logos and Lambrettas!
The current crop of custom scooters is no different to years gone by in the range of subjects and imagery covered by murals, but possibly what has developed over the years is the quality, colour and detail that is held within the painted images. Some of the current crop have some truly incredible work on them. I love the imagery of Midnight Oil and Peaky Blinders whose owners have taken two very different approaches to customisation – and they both work very well.
So despite the complexity of creating a full custom scooter featuring murals, it is a trend that may dip slightly in and out of cool but it is a practice intrinsically linked to the top end custom scooter world and some incredible creativity coming out of garages and workshops around the country to provide some amazingly detailed pieces of work that sometimes have to be studied for some time and at very close quarters to appreciate.
Murals may not be the most practical customisation in terms of day to day use and it can be difficult to use a murals scooter regularly although certainly not impossible (think how many events over the years that you have seen Sign of the Snake at!). But it’s definitely an aspect of customisation that can give magazine editors joy and photographers the challenge of how to capture on film the images and details from a set of bodywork.
So I’m sure that while murals are not to everyone’s taste I’m sure that we all have our own personal favourites over the years that we still see from time to time or have gone the way of legend just waiting to be recreated soon at a custom show near you.
We are even seeing modern interpretations and twists, on age-old themes, often considered classics. Check out the ‘Lens of Shipley’ style on the Vespa featured in this month’s mag for one such example.