Follow-up: Robert Frese of Chicago, Illinois

Thirty years ago, Robert Frese decided to specialize in gold leaf lettering, primarily for office doors and storefronts, in the Chicago area and opened Chicagold Sign Company. He was first featured in the September/October 1992 issue of SignCraft.

Is your work primarily gold leaf signs now?

Well, I specialize in gold leaf—that’s always been my primary thing, and it’s how I started. But it’s not what I do every day. I used to do a lot more gold leaf office door lettering downtown, but that’s diminished. That’s fine—outlining little lettering on glass for hours on end is grueling work. I still do a lot of office doors for the downtown office buildings, but mostly vinyl now.