George Taylor (1914–1996) ^[1] was an English artist. He has prominence for his functional pub signs in a distinct hybrid modern-meets-traditional style.

Taylor trained as a signwriter in Birmingham.^[2] In the 1930s he worked for a signwriting company in his native town Bromsgrove, where his commissions included designing film posters for the Rank Organisation.^[1]

From 1941 to 1945, during World War II, he was sent to Cairo to work as a camouflage artist (painter).^[1][3]

After the war, until his retirement in 1976, he was director of a silk-screen printing company in Surrey.^[1] He and his wife Sylvia then moved to Yorkshire and he painted over 100 pub signs for these businesses across that region.^[1] In 1984 his family moved to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in which area he continued work for his most frequent client,^[1] the Greene King Brewery who are based there — he created more than 250 signs for Greene King pubs.^[2] He was main sign artist for a period for the Wem Brewing Company based in the market town of Wem in Shropshire.^[3] He died in January 1996.^[1]

In 2008, his widow^[2] presented Greene King with a collection of his miniature, proof, pub sign designs,^[2] painted for the approval of clients before being copied as full-sized designs.^[3] They were put on exhibition in the brewhouse in his new hometown.^[2] In December 2011, she displayed some of his miniatures on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow programme.^[3]

References