About CelebritySignatures

CelebritySignatures is a browsable collection of more than 7,000 signatures of writers, artists, statesmen and other figures from history, each traced to a published source file with a known license.

What you will find here

The collection. A gallery you can filter by category, sort by name, notability, licence, date of death or how many signatures we hold for a person over time. The largest groups are authors and visual artists, followed by political figures, all 56 signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and a small set of the oldest signatures we could document.
A page for each person with their signature, life dates, category, notable museum holdings where known, and the licence and source of the image.
Signature wallpaper and murals. A studio for designing wallpaper and made-to-order murals from signatures in the collection.
Signature clothing. A small apparel range limited to signatures that pass our legal checks (see Sources & licensing).
The Signature Games. Six short games that test your eye for historical handwriting, from naming a mystery signature to guessing which of two signatures by the same person came first.
Upload your signature. A way for a person to add their own signature to their account.

One rule above all: never invent a signature

Every signature in the collection is a real image file that already exists in a public source, most often Wikimedia Commons, linked to the person through Wikidata. We do not draw, trace, generate or "recreate" signatures. If we cannot find a real, licensed file for someone, they are not in the collection.

Why mostly historical figures?

A signature carries more than one kind of right: the copyright in the image, and, for living people, the right to control commercial use of their name and identity. Historical figures whose signatures are in the public domain avoid both problems, which is why the collection leans heavily towards people who are no longer living. Our sources page explains the checks in detail.

Independence

CelebritySignatures is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any person whose signature appears here, or by their estates. A signature's presence on the site, or on a product, does not mean that person or estate endorses it.

Contact

Questions, corrections or a takedown request: email info@designerwallcoverings.com. If you believe a file is mislabelled or a licence is wrong, tell us which page and we will check it against the source.