Basically, I have run across three kinds of vintage road bicycle art - stencils, decals and stickers. Does anyone know when each was most used? Put another way, did stencil precede water slide decals and did the decals precede vinyl stickers.

The down tube art on my Legnano Gran Premio appears to be stenciled on. Has anyone tried to reproduce this kind of art?

This guy where I work does it. Not by choice but by necessity. He lived in Cuba until the mid 80's until he came to the USA. He told me when you repainted bikes in Cuba you lost all decals and such. So they made stencils for all the lettering. I've seen the pictures of his work, very impressive. In fact, he's the same person that painted my Red and white Le Tour. Seems there are lots of bike in Cuba, I would guess Soviet and Chinese brands.

M.A do you have contact info for this guy????

As for those legnano decals, those are available at ebay just in case, the main problem is the darn green, dunno anybody able to match it 100%

For the record, a distinction should be made between inked decals (tampo on decal paper?) and printed ink decals from modern laser printers. The former have much softer lines from uneven edges, which give them a certain C&V charm. The former are much crisper, seeing that they are printed from vector artwork off a computer.

Here are examples of the former:


Early Competition script - an inked decal. Later one is obviously a sticker.



Don't forget Schwinn's penchant for silkscreening either:



-Kurt