Sign Collections
Ghost sign archives and collections.
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Singapore’s Historic Signs
I’ve never been to Singapore but have always believed it to be an ultra-modern city-state, and an unlikely place to find much in the way of historic signs. However, it turns out that this prejudice is unfounded, as this collection of photos from Mark De Winne, Vikas Kailankaje and Vishesh Wanvari shows. They were featured […]
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London Street Level by Robert Brownjohn
I recently (28 October) hosted ‘Font Sunday’ on Twitter with the theme of ‘fading fonts’ to mark the changing of the clocks and the fading light it signifies. Among the contributions made was a tweet from Eliza Brownjohn, daughter of the designer Robert Brownjohn (1925-1970) who took the photo above in 1961. It is one […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]