24 Oct 2012

Brymay Reveal from West Norwood

Fading hand-painted sign on a wall advertising Brymay matches
Photo: Caroline’s Miscellany

You win some, you lose some and Caroline has definitely found a winner with this fantastic Brymay matches reveal in West Norwood. It is part of a wider campaign by the Bryant & May company, as can be seen by the other examples of their advertising in the History of Advertising Trust Ghostsigns Archive.

In the comments on Caroline’s blog post about it Sebastien points out that an earlier advertisement for the Westminster Gazette is also on the wall. The most visible are the last letters of ‘Westminster’ across the top. Sebastien also points out that the Westminster Gazette were also reasonably prolific in their use of hand-painted signs on walls, although I wasn’t aware of them when I wrote this very early post about the Gillette/Criterion palimpsest in Stoke Newington. It’s interesting to find the same newspaper at the same location as signs advertising what were once probably competing match brands, Brymay and Criterion.

All in all a great piece of evolution in London’s ghostsigns landscape, it’ll be interesting to see what fate awaits this well preserved portion of Brymay’s advertising past…

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