I’ve been contemplating the construction of this sign for several years now and had already created a black-and-white image from the above photo of the sign at the real-life Osteria Al Vecchio Stallo. (This image shows the sign after the building’s renovation; when I was last there in 2005, the stucco was a dirty gray and the sign lacked the new brass detailing.) At first, I let my husband convince me that it would be easy to photo-etch the main shapes from a sheet of brass, but after doing some research, I came to the conclusion that experimenting with scary chemicals such as hydrochloric acid just wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time. Fast forward to this spring when I started thinking seriously about completing the project. After stumbling across Blake Pietrolungo (a.k.a. “TinyCraftsman”) on Instagram, I considered the possibility of hiring him to custom laser-cut my design. We first discussed thin plywood, but he convinced me to go with 1mm PETG plastic, explaining that the fine details would be less fragile than with wood.
For the cross pieces, I cut sections from a 1/16″ square brass tube. The ball on the end of the horizontal rod was a blue “no-hole” bead, just like the one I used for Pasticceria Penso’s sign. The round base for the pitcher was punched out of a sheet of aluminum using the metal punch I bought for making the Parmesan dishes.
In order to make the attachment to the wall more secure, I’m using some sturdy wire from jewelry headpins. I had some extra scraps of black wire left over from hanging some of the elements on the interior walls and bent a piece to fit the contour of the plastic arch. That wire was too thick to fit inside the brass tube, so I used a different size headpin there. (The photo shows the copper pin prior to being trimmed.)
After gluing all these pieces together, I spray-painted the entire structure black. (In this photo, the spray paint looks a bit brownish, but it’s definitely black to the naked eye—perhaps it was reflecting the sunlight here.)
After seeing what a great job Blake did on the initial two pieces, I placed another custom order for the fork and spoon. I really thought they’d be too tiny to laser-cut, at approximately 1/2″ tall and less than 1/8″ wide at the widest point, but he was able to pull it off. I painted them black and attached each piece to the rod with some hair-thin wire that had been stripped from a bit of electrical wire.
For the gold lettering, I tested both acrylic paint and alcohol ink and found that the ink was more opaque and less sparkly than the paint. However, even my finest brush—and I have some super tiny ones for miniature work—made the ink look too gloppy. I was in the middle of browsing Amazon for extra fine Sharpies when my husband offered me his old calligraphy pen. I haven’t done any calligraphy since I was a child, so my lettering isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for the rustic look of this sign. (A side note about the spelling on the sign, lest anyone think I made a typo: “ostarie al vecio stallo” uses Friulian and Venetian dialect for the words “osteria” and “vecchio.”)
For the brass detailing, I cut pieces from a 0.005″ brass sheet. The rivets are snippets cut from jewelry wire. I used copper for this, since I didn’t have any gold-colored wire that was thin enough. Plus, I rather like the juxtaposition of the two metals.
And finally, the pitcher was part of a trio of pitchers I purchased online. This is the smallest one, which I spray-painted white to cover its original floral design; the other two pitchers are on the shelves in the osteria.
Several years ago, when I was making the signs for Gelateria Bocelli, I also made this tiny sign, which is an exact replica of the one on the real-life Osteria Al Vecchio Stallo, located at via Viola, 7 in Udine, Italy. I used the same image transfer technique as for my gelateria’s hanging sign and sandwich board sign.
At long last, the signs are finally mounted!
