Sign Making

Painting and sign making techniques.

Sgraffito and the Old Dairy at Crouch Hill

These pictorial panels depicting the products and services on what is now The Old Dairy on Stoud Green Road have always intrigued me, and ahead of next week’s talk at the North London Lettering Association I thought I should carry out a little research. The late-Victorian building once housed a branch of the Friern Manor […]

12 Jan 2018
Cookie Cutter Shops on Walthamstow High Street

Simon Memel sent me a link to this article on Dezeen by Owen Hatherley about an odd thing that has just happened on Walthamstow High Street. The council has funded the standardisation of shop front signage, leading to the loss of shops’ individual character. I added the following comment to the discussion that has developed […]

9 Nov 2017
When Better Letters Met Cliff Headford

This is a reposting of the article that originally appeared here on the Better Letters blog. On 4th July 2016 I received the following email in response to a book I was working on at the time: I care for an elderly gentleman in Bristol, now nearly 96, who was a sign painter after the […]

1 Jul 2017
The Vacuum Shop and George Braun

Guests on my Stoke Newington Ghostsigns Walk in early 2015 were lucky to see a bonus fading fascia en route, advertising The Vacuum Shop. This was revealed by works to the Anglo Asian restaurant, which now straddles numbers 60 and 62 Stoke Newington Church Street. Ben Selig was the proprietor of an “electrical appliances” shop […]

15 Apr 2017
John Hawkins, Steeles & Chaney Signs

This ghostsign on Stoke Newington High Street comes at about the halfway point of my walking tour through the area. It is a palimpsest which has been well researched by Sébastien Ardouin. I recently took a couple of close-up photos, one of which has added to this information about the sign. Sébastien references this old […]

25 Feb 2017
RIP: Signwriters – Gilding & Pictorial Artists

This beautiful gilded script once marked the home of Ambridge Signs. When they left the premises the sign didn’t come with them and, until last month, it provided a reminder of the area’s signwriting heritage. It was situated on this unassuming building at the end of a terrace on Southgate Road, De Beauvoir, but has now […]

21 Mar 2015