Shop Signs

East End Shops from Spitalfields Life

Spitalfields Life has published a series of pieces documenting East End shop fronts, in support of the campaign against the forthcoming rise in business rates across the area. I have picked one photo from each piece and would encourage a proper browse of all of them. Fascinating stuff! Alan Dein’s East End Shops John Claridge’s […]

4 Mar 2017

The Fantastic World of Shopfrontelegy

I’ve recently subscribed to Shopfrontelegy, a post-per-day blog from Vici MacDonald, the photographer and publisher behind Formerly. Given my recent interest in ‘fading fascias‘ the blog has been compulsive reading/viewing, with a collection of shopfront photography going back many years. It should probably come with a health warning about the hours you’re likely to lose […]

30 Jul 2014

Lyndsey Smith and the signs of Bath and Lewes

The Circulating Library sign from Bath is certainly one of the most popular and regularly photographed ghostsigns in the UK [See comments on this post for some more on this sign]. However, this is the first time I’ve seen it appear in watercolour. This painting by Lyndsey Smith was the runner up in the Bath […]

5 Sep 2012

American Roadside sign art from Bill Martin

Bennie Frazier’s retro fashion store in Sweetwater, Texas, is an unlikely home for a collection of original artworks from Bill Martin, late resident of the same town. These depict the colourful roadside signs that once characterised American highways, often using neon and sometimes as big as the buildings they were positioned on. These were referred […]

22 Jul 2012

Melbourne’s Milk Bars and the signs that adorned them

This is one of the shop signs found in this article which profiles the decline in Melbourne’s Milk Bars, retail outlets that once dotted the streets.  The article features a collection of 22 other shop signs and fascias and was spotted by Stef on the investigatory Finding the Radio Book blog.  The comments suggest that […]

28 Jun 2012

Then and now: shopfronts 1988 revisited

Via this review of the East End shopfronts exhibition happening now in Tower Hamlets, I came across this incredible site which is the work of Lady Lamo and her colleague Alabama.  It retraces the steps that Alan Dein took in 1988 and documents what has become of the shops he photographed.  The result is absolutely […]

3 Jun 2012

East End shop fronts exhibition profiled on Spitalfields Life

Photo: Alan Dein Interview with Alan Dein and more preview images of this exhibition on the Spitalfiends Life blog.

21 May 2012

Photographic exhibition of East End shop fronts opens today

I’m gutted I won’t be able to visit this exhibition (pdf flyer below) of Alan Dein‘s late 1980s images of shop fronts in Tower Hamlets. If anyone writes a review then let me know and I’ll link to it here. (Hat tip to Lorna at History Workshop Online for the discovery.) Download exhibition poster.

17 May 2012

Graphic DNA documents the visual language of the street

I’ve recently been in regular contact with Geraldine Marshall whose project, Graphic DNA, caught my attention.  It is the topic of her PhD thesis, under the supervision of Dr Caroline Archer.  I took the opportunity, before she gets too busy, to ask Geraldine some questions at her base in the Midlands, from mine in South […]

25 Mar 2012

Now you see me, now you don’t: London’s elusive shop signs

Nice article here about the brief reveal, and more extended cover up, of some of London’s beautiful hand painted shop signs.  In some ways they are being preserved, but they could be equally be showcased.  They represent the skills of signwiters such as the contemporary Peter Hardwicke.  Jane also covered a closely related topic in her account […]

29 Feb 2012