Margaret Kilgallen: Off the Wall

In the late 1990s, while she worked in the Library’s Preservation Department, artist Margaret Kilgallen hand-lettered signs for the Technical Services work areas. Hung on the wall outside each office, a series of ten signs greeted library workers from 1999 until 2005 when the department moved to another building down the street from the Main Library. The original signs are now preserved in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering, Book Arts & Special Collections, where they are publicly accessible to everyone interested in the work of this Mission School artist. Painted on reclaimed wood, using recycled red, black, and off-white paint, Margaret Kilgallen’s faux weathered signs were inspired by the vernacular shop signs of her Mission District neighborhood, and deep study of historic typographic and manuscript models in the Book Arts & Special Collections Center. Now for the first time, all ten of Margaret Kilgallen’s signs are on display.