Palimpsest
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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.
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New Brands on Holborn’s Gillette Palimpsest
New brands on Holborn’s Gillette palimpsest revealed during building works next door.
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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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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]