Sam Roberts

It’s All Popping Off in Deptford Market Yard

In Deptford, South East London, the processes of development/gentrification are having an impact on the area’s walls, including ghost signs. The following is cribbed from two Twitter threads, here and here, largely focused on the Deptford Market Yard. First up is this shelter sign from WW2. On 16 July the Deptford Society tweeted in a […]

14 Sep 2018

Recycling & Rearranging Ghost Signs

The above fragment of a ghost sign was revealed by the demolition of the adjascent building in Melbourne in 2014, as documented by Al Briggs at RMIT… “The majority of existing ghost signs that remain in suburban Melbourne are signs that were originally painted on the side walls of our Milk Bars – local shops […]

7 Sep 2018

Shropshire Shop Fronts of the 1880s

My father-in-law discovered this astonishing collection of high quality photography showing the high street in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in 1888. They were photographed by Joseph Lewis della-Porta who came from a retailing family and had the foresight to document these images which convey so much of life 130 years ago. They are part of a collection […]

31 Aug 2018

Ghost Signs of Montreal & Ottawa from John Toohey

Ghost signs in Montreal, Canada, are an interesting category, due to the bilingual nature of the city and wider region of Quebec. This idiosyncracy has been covered in ‘Sur les murs‘ by Réjane Bougé. (Lovely photographs, contemporary and archival, but sadly the text is only in French!). John Toohey has been documenting some of the […]

24 Aug 2018

Now Open: The Grand Exhibition of the Pre-Vinylite Society

The Grand Exhibition of the Pre-Vinylite Society is now showing for four days at the Bargehouse, behind the OXO Tower on London’s South Bank. Visitors can take in the c.30 pieces from an international cast of contemporary sign and lettering artists, each inspired by entries in the catalogue of the 1762 Grand Exhibition of the […]

16 Aug 2018

Light Capsules is Back (for one night only)

Tomorrow, Thursday 16 August, Craig Winslow is bringing his Light Capsules project back to London for a ‘one night only’ special reboot of the 100-year-old Barlow & Roberts ghost sign at 25-33 Southwark Street (under the railway arch). As darkness falls the sign will come back to life through a series of illuminations showing how […]

15 Aug 2018

Social Decay from Andrei Lacatusu

Digital artist Andrei Lacatusu has created Social Decay, a series of images depicting a possible future of washed-up digital companies and their derelict signs. They are ‘faux’, although in a different sense to those that I’ve documented in the past. An article on Digital Arts contrasts them “to the slick, shiny digital versions we see […]

10 Aug 2018

Brilliant at Las Vegas’ Neon Museum

[This is a reposting of the original blog post on Better Letters.] Since 1996 Las Vegas’ Neon Museum has put the city’s decommissioned signage on display in its ‘bone yard’ exhibit. It was already a ‘must visit’ lettering location but has now been boosted by an innovative treatment of the historic pieces found there. Craig […]

3 Aug 2018

64,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Cave Paintings

Continuing the occassional exploration of ‘ancient’ signs, I was thrilled to hear of this evidence that Neanderthals were busy painting the walls of caves across Spain. This species, almost dubbed Homo Stupidus (yes, stupid man!), were not previously known for this type of cultural activity, and this remarkable work has discarded that prejudice for good. […]

27 Jul 2018

Bill-Poster: A London Type

Sadly we recently lost what was one of my all-time favourite ghost signs, in the shape of the Black Cat on Dingley Road. RIP. The brand was a pioneer of cigarette cards, and their power to foster increased sales through the parallel addictive properties of collecting, and nicotine. Recently the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life […]

20 Jul 2018

Los Angeles’ Reverse Palimpsest

This ‘reverse’ ghost sign was recently revealed in Los Angeles and provides a third example of concrete setting and holding back the paint that once covered the wall of an adjoining building. (See two more examples posted previously here and here.) Most visible are the large lower-case letters that spell ‘ella’. It isn’t clear whether […]

13 Jul 2018

The Enduring Legacy of the Joshua Brothers Distillery

Pickles Street in Melbourne was once home to the Joshua Brothers Distillery, and later United Distillers. The latter adorned the building with a series of painted bottles depicting the products that they distributed in Australia. The pieces were painted in the 1960s by signwriter Keith Martin and are wonderfully detailed pieces, reminiscent of Colossal Media’s […]

6 Jul 2018

Bovril’s Windrush Square Legacy

Windrush Square in Brixton is home to this, one of the most famous ghost signs in London. While the Bovril sign is still very prominent, less well known is that beneath it are the remains of what was once a painted advertisement for Butlin’s. While researching the Butlin’s sign, Roy Reed happened across this wonderful […]

29 Jun 2018

The Grand Exhibition of the Society of Sign Painters

The following article is re-posted from the original on Better Letters. This August we’ll be opening a very special sign painting exhibition within the public-facing part of Letterheads 2018: London Calling. It is being curated by Meredith Kasabian of Best Dressed Signs and the Pre-Vinylite Society and builds on her research into an 18th Century […]

22 Jun 2018

Evans, Jones & Ricketts Restoration in Talgarth, Mid Wales

The restoration of ghost signs seems to be becoming more prevalent in the UK, or perhaps I’m just more conscious of them taking place. While I don’t document every instance, I thought that this one had an interesting back story, as shared by Stefan Lewis of Talgarth History… The sign is on the corner of […]

15 Jun 2018

Ariel / Writers Revisited

This ghost sign for Ariel motorbikes, and the Writers shop that sold them in Kennington, is one of my London favourites, partly due to the illustrated element, and partly due to the historical connections that emerged after I first wrote about it in 2007. The above photograph shows the sign as it was on my […]

8 Jun 2018

The Dioramas of Northall by Job Weessies

Job Weessies is a Dutch model maker and, after some time working on railway models, he has moved into working with card and on creating street scenes. While he has never visited London, or indeed the UK, he uses a variety of publically available resources to conduct his research into how the streets here would […]

1 Jun 2018

A 1984 Photo of the Spitalfields Gillette Ghost Sign

I first posted about this illustrated Gillette ghost sign on Commercial Street back in 2007 when I came across it on Frank Jump’s Fading Ads blog. Frank told me that the best place to photograph it was from the top of the nearby carpark which led to my 2008 capture above. Recently the sign had […]

25 May 2018

Karl Blaschke: The Sign Man of Munich

[This book review is reposted from the original on the Better Letters blog.] “Signwriters are entitled to their immortality just as are other artists and craftsmen” – Kevin Corrigan Kearns, Dublin’s Vanishing Craftsmen Signwriting is perhaps the least documented of the lettering disciplines; it’s nature is ephemeral versus the relative permanence of calligraphy on important […]

18 May 2018

King Size Viceroy Reversal in Rockford IL

This ghost sign in Rockford, Illinois advertises Viceroy cigarettes, and that they are ‘Now King Size’. It was shared on Twitter by BarbarianDiva and is a lovely example of a ‘reverse’ ghost sign. This effect is achieved by the demolition of the host building, leaving the paintwork on the adjacent property that was built after […]

11 May 2018

The Shopfronts of ‘Paris Re-Tale’

After publishing the wonderful photos of one-time Paris sign business E. Gautier, I was alerted to this project and the above video where the sign makes a brief cameo. Five of my favourites below, but make sure you check out the full collection, including background notes, by photographer Sebastian Erras for Pixartprinting.

4 May 2018

Roy Reed’s Reconstructions

Roy Reed is a prolific collector and researcher of ghost signs, and uses his skills as a designer to decipher them. I’ve featured his work previously, on the almost illegible William Walker & Sons sign in Bermondsey. Roy is also a co-collaborator on the forthcoming Clapham Ghostsigns Walk. He has kindly shared some more of […]

27 Apr 2018

Michelle Heron’s Fantastic Fascias

Michelle Heron is a London-based painter with a paticular fascination for old shops and shop fronts. Her paintings depict iconic fascias, many of which have been lost since she turned her attention to them, and some that survive in a state of perpetual uncertainty. As with my own work on ghostsigns, Michelle is focused on […]

20 Apr 2018

NE Signs Scavenger Hunt

Following a series of discussions on Twitter myself and a handful of others have decided to run a scavenger hunt to locate, photograph and map the remaining street signs featuring the now-defunct NE London Postal District. It will take place 2-5pm on the afternoon of Saturday 21 April, meeting at the Clapton Hart, 231 Lower […]

13 Apr 2018