I'm always noticing them - I'm sure you are too - those fading remnants of painted advertising slogans on the ends (or sometimes the fronts) of buildings. Touching, faintly melancholy vestiges of a painted past when every available wall was put to commercial use, they are often - especially in France - pleasingly designed and rather charming. A shame, I've vaguely thought, that these things are passing from the world unnoticed and unrecorded, without so much as a name to identify them... I should have known better. Not only do they have a name - they are known, aptly enough, as 'ghost signs' or 'ghostsigns' - they also have a Wikipedia entry, a blog devoted to them, and an active archive. Another heartening example of the wired world of the internet being put to good use, celebrating and recording unconsidered trifles that are part of the warp and weft of life, but might otherwise pass unnoticed and fade from memory.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Ghost Signs
I'm always noticing them - I'm sure you are too - those fading remnants of painted advertising slogans on the ends (or sometimes the fronts) of buildings. Touching, faintly melancholy vestiges of a painted past when every available wall was put to commercial use, they are often - especially in France - pleasingly designed and rather charming. A shame, I've vaguely thought, that these things are passing from the world unnoticed and unrecorded, without so much as a name to identify them... I should have known better. Not only do they have a name - they are known, aptly enough, as 'ghost signs' or 'ghostsigns' - they also have a Wikipedia entry, a blog devoted to them, and an active archive. Another heartening example of the wired world of the internet being put to good use, celebrating and recording unconsidered trifles that are part of the warp and weft of life, but might otherwise pass unnoticed and fade from memory.
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Also spoofed up care of Photoshop
ReplyDeletehttp://fixedby.me.uk/
There's one on Mill Road in Cambridge. A local writer noted how charming it was, and a local hero refurbished it.
ReplyDeletethanks for this nige, I love odd marginalia like this
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple on Clapham High Street, and having seen this link, one on Great Ormond Street.
ReplyDeletehttp://knowledgeoflondon.com/graffiti6ads.html
I just never noticed, except for the one by the pub in Clapham ;)
A few good ones round here, though not many.
ReplyDeleteHave you looked through Flickr? It's usually a good resource for this kind of thing.
This is a general search: click
And this is a link to the Flickr group for UK ghost signs: click
Has made me rather nostalgic for London, Nige - I shall go on a ghost signs walk on my next trip back!
ReplyDeleteTop tip, Mark. Here's the Cambridge one for the dairy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=cambridge&w=1060904%40N21&m=pool
I am a photographer and I record them, John Deacon also did in the early 50's, be a very interesting project to compare
ReplyDeleteThanks everybody - I seem to have stumbled on an unsuspected subculture here...
ReplyDeleteMmmmm... bile beans
ReplyDeleteDon't remember being healthy or bright eyed - and certainly not slim - when my mum plied us with these little pills, along with the monstrous malted cod liver oil, black as pitch, and tasting of tarmacadam. Gad, those were the days
ReplyDeleteGhost signs! Really! I never knew that name, although my work is set in the classic time of such signs. I guess the Burmashave ads are a different genre....
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the write-up and the conversation you've stimulated on your blog. Work on the archive has really been worth it and we were recognised with some profile on the BBC and in the Guardian.
ReplyDelete