Ghost Signs

this article is not my own and is published for demonstration purposes only. 

They once covered walls across the country with brightly coloured advertising and promotions. Their demise, which continues to this day, has been profound but an army of photographers have been working to create a lasting record of these signs of old, commonly known as ‘ghostsigns’.

The last survivors

The once popular medium of hand painted advertising on walls hasn’t been used in any significant way for some time. Advances in technology and the economics of production have left the signs and those who once produced them largely redundant. However, many of these pieces of advertising that were once crafted by hand in all weathers have survived well beyond their ‘sell by’ date. Advertising is typically ephemeral in nature but these signs have endured, and through them we are offered a window into the past, a glimpse into a different time when smoking benefited your throat and people took their pens to be repaired.

Time shift

The walls on which these signs appear were either leased directly by the property owner or on their behalf by a local agent (a site on Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, in 1914 cost £30 to hire for a year). The duration of these arrangements were measured in years, in stark contrast to today’s billboards which are typically booked in fortnightly blocks. This shift in duration is in keeping with wider trends in advertising and communications: the ancient Egyptians chiselled their signs into stone lasting millennia, while television and, even more recently, digital media provide advertisers with exposure lasting only a matter of seconds. These hand painted signs exist between these two extremes, symbolic of the longer term intent of the companies using them to advertise. Adding to their longevity was the use of lead paints whose lead content peaked at a time when hand painted signs were common, the period 1930–55.

Painter to poster

As the use of large printed billboards increased in the 1950s and 1960s the economics of production led to hand painted signs being cast aside. In addition to the lower costs of printing posters, advertisers were also offered the benefit of faithfully reproduced designs across multiple locations. This could not be assured with the hand painted form because of the individual approaches of particular signwriters. While advertising departments of clients and their agencies would have created designs to guide the signwriters they were required to offer some discretion to account for the huge variety in the size and dimensions of wall spaces available. The colours used may also have been subject to variation, especially if these were not specifically
dictated alongside the design.

Who’s who?

In many cases the signs feature brands with which we are still familiar: Hovis; Gillette; Nestle; Twinings; Boots. They also showcase names which have ceased to exist since the signwriter scaled the wall to apply the paint: Black Cat Cigarettes; Peterkin’s Custard; Bile Beans; Turog Bread. In both cases signs and their messages have survived while many more have been lost, either permanently or on a more temporary basis.

Earth, wind & fire

The most obvious ongoing threat to the survival of the signs is the weather that continually erodes their hues. Where walls have had multiple signs painted one on top of the other the weathering has the effect of wearing away at the most recent sign, only for the older paintwork to become increasingly visible. These palimpsests offer layers of text which sometimes appear to promote ‘hybrid’ products, such as Gillette Matches (a combination of signs for Gillette Razors and Criterion Matches), which have never existed.

The full Ghost Signs article is available in Magpie Issue 1, published 2nd November 2015