Palimpsest

The Boyd is Back in Town

Boyd Pianos’ ghost sign on Shaklewell Lane, London E8, revealed again after 13 years’ hibernation.

16 May 2025

Pawned for Good: The Partial Palimpsest in St James

The ghost sign for the J.A. & G.E. Smith pawnbrokers in east London has been painted over and now lost. RIP.

5 Sep 2024

H. Newman & Sons (Have Removed), Melbourne

A surviving palimpsest in the centre of Melbourne reveals the legacy of the jeweller and watchmaker Henry Newman. Photo: Sean Reynolds.

23 Jun 2024

W.E. Baxter: A Beautiful Palimpsest in Lewes, Sussex

Layers of lettering in Lewes, advertising the W.E. Baxter printers, bookbinders, and stationers. Photo: David Quay.

5 Jun 2024

A Curious Palimpsest: Foster Ltd in Bristol

Small lettering emerging beneath a recently revealed ghost sign for Foster Ltd in Bristol. Photographed by Tobias Newbigin.

10 Feb 2024

New Brands on Holborn’s Gillette Palimpsest

New brands on Holborn’s Gillette palimpsest revealed during building works next door.

23 Oct 2022

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

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

Quernmore Road Signs & Ghostsigns Cluster

Above is my 2007 photo of the Brymay/John Bull palimpsest on Quernmore Road in Haringey. At the time, in addition to wondering who John Bull was, I said I needed to go back in the winter when the tree would be less obstructive. I did so a couple of weeks ago, as part of my […]

25 Mar 2017

Scales, Weights & Weighing Machines in London’s Kings Cross

This popular London ghostsign is located at the Kings Cross end of Gray’s Inn Road, with the photo above from Jennifer Pedler and the History of Advertising Trust. A couple of years ago I gave a talk at Middlesex University where one of the students, Mariana Messaggi, was researching the origins of the company as […]

11 Mar 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

Ken Jones’ Butte Palimpsests

Dr Ken Jones has been doing an incredible job documenting the ghostsigns of America via his American Ghosts project. Not only does this involve detailed photographic documentation (see previous post on his process), but also pinning ghostsigns onto an ever-growing map. This now pinpoints thousands of examples and allows areas with high densities of signs […]

28 Jan 2017

Light Capsules from Craig Winslow

Craig Winslow is an experiential designer who has recently turned his gaze towards ghostsigns, and the creative possibilities offered by applying his expertise in light projection mapping. The idea first came to him during a trip across America and has grown since. In essence it involves recreating the fading signs through a process of typographic […]

7 Sep 2016

Scotland in Detail: Vintage Signs from Dave Cowan

This fabulous montage of Scottish ghostsigns was created by Dave Cowan of Scotland in Detail. It is available as a print from his store and he says the following of his work and this creation [Links expired]. I’ve been fascinated by these old signs for a few years now. They’re glimpses into the past and […]

26 Mar 2014

Ghostsigns of Minnesota and the Mid-West

Earlier this month I went on my first ever trip to the USA. This was to attend ‘Mazeppa Mardi Gras’, a meeting of the Letterheads in sub-zero Minnesota. It was a fantastic week of sign making and painting and you can read a full blown account of the week over on the Better Letters site. […]

19 Mar 2014

Brymay Reveal from West Norwood

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 […]

24 Oct 2012

Before the secret lemonade drinker there was this Willesden Ghostsign

Another great discovery and background research from Sebastien here for a brand whose most memorable advertising was probably this:

22 Mar 2012

Four layers of Dubonnet palimpsest

Great discovery here from Sebastien in which he has identified four signs for the same brand vying for position on the same wall.  There’s a great gallery of French ghost signs here (Dubonnet here) and my posts on the country are here with additional photos in this Flickr set.

20 Mar 2012

Gillette/Criterion (RIP)

Gillette/Criterion, Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 (July 2007) Gillette/Criterion, Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 (November 2009) Two RIPs in one day, what’s happening! Again, this happened a little while ago but it was only today that I managed to get out with my camera to take a photograph. This was once one in a series […]

12 Nov 2009

Leicester Ghost Signs

Browsing some of the vast and ever growing collection of photos in the Flickr Ghost Signs pool I came across a nice collection taken by Amy Jane Barnes in Leicester. Here are three of my favourites. Thank you to Amy for letting me feature them on the site and do visit her ongoing photo-a-day project […]

4 Apr 2008

Southborough Butchers

Driving back to London from a wedding this weekend I pulled over in Southborough to take a picture of this sign. It’s obviously been maintained and I like the effect used on the corners.  Like the Vaneers ad it features an old style phone number, this one for Tunbridge Wells 529 757. However, my favourite […]

30 Jul 2007

Fading Signs

This sign on Sidmouth Street in Central London is an excellent example of palimpsest and also featured in Time Out’s original article on disappearing London. However, this particular photo offers a dramatic illustration of the effects of weathering on brickads. It can clearly be seen from the shadow cast by the sun that the top […]

16 Jul 2007

Brymay Palimpsest

I went to meet Sebastian Groes today as we’re doing a presentation at the University of Westminster next week. On my way there I passed this sign in Haringey, designed to be clearly visible from the train tracks. There are two signs fighting for attention, one from the classic blue and yellow Brymay Matches campaign […]

11 Jul 2007

Gillette Palimpsest 2

Here’s another example from the Gillette campaign where there are three signs revealed on one site (palimpsest) in Dalston: Gillette across the middle; Cafe vertically on the right; Sunday… on the diagonal in the top left. There are probably even more but these are the most prominent.

2 Jul 2007