George Taylor (artist)

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]