TAYLOR, George

1914 - 1996

George Richard Taylor was born at 304 Smithdown Road, Liverpool on 14 October 1914 and baptised at St Barnabas, Mossley Hill, Liverpool on 6 December 1914, son of Willie George Taylor (1888-1957), a clerk, and his wife Florence R née Driscoll, who married at Ormskirk, Lancashire in 1911. George trained and initially worked as a sign-writer in Birmingham, where his commissions also included designing film posters for the Rank Organisation in the 1930s. During the Second World War he was in Cairo working as a camouflage artist and, on his return to Britain after the war, he ran his own silk-screen printing company in Surrey until 1976. After retirement he started painting public house signs, a trade that he continued after moving to Bury St Edmund's, Suffolk in 1984, where he did most of his work for local brewers Greene King, for whom he created more than 250 signs, including for the 'Dog and Partridge', 'The Falcon' and 'The Grapes'. George Richard Taylor died on 5 January 1996, until recently many of his works were on display in the Greene King brewery at Bury St Edmund's. On 10 December 2016 some of his pub sign designs, as well as original paintings and sketches, were auctioned in a sale at Lacy Scott & Knight on behalf of his widow Sylvia Taylor.

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Works by This Artist