Ghost signs are everywhere - and can lift the spirits
Sam Roberts who set up the site ghostsigns.co.uk says it is all about being aware of what a ghost sign really is and looking around you.
His site was one of the first attempts to gather together a digital collection of the signs from anywhere in the world. Roberts defines a ghost sign as 'the typically fading remains of advertising that was once painted directly by hand onto brick walls'. They tend to date from the late Victorian era right up to the 1950s and 60s. They are not the metal or plastic signs erected on a shop front which are easily removed, rather they are actually painted onto the fabric of a building.
But there is a secondary class in Edinburgh at least, with some lettering which was applied to stonework, and then removed, leaving behind an outline. But there are two accepted requisites - age and redundancy. They are often, but not exclusively, advertising signs, but sometimes give directions or can even be political messages.
Roberts is Director of Ghostsigns and Better Letters, and Associate Researcher at the Typographic Hub at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, although now lives in Spain. He curated the History of Advertising Trust Ghostsigns Archive and helped to develop the Ghostsigns Tours app along with Adobe Creative resident and experiential designer, Craig Winslow. This leads a path round the sites in London of some examples.Some of their work was highlighted (literally with light projections) at the London Design Festival in 2016.
Sam explained how his interest in these old advertising signs began. He said: "It was around 2006 when I used to live in north London, in Stoke Newington. It was quite fortuitous that I was living there as there is quite a cluster of ghost signs in the area. I happened to notice one of them, and thought it was intriguing on a number of levels. One was this idea of someone painting a billboard type of advertising directly onto walls, and the other thing was the kind of faded aspect that you get with painted signs.
It's a sign that they represent something of impermanence, like a reflection of life itself, within them. There was an urge in me to document them before they become lost. There has been a slight resurgence of interest in recent years as signs have been replaced by vinyl and billboards and other modern forms."
He continued: "The particular sign that started me off had an interesting form of words on it "Fount pens repaired". This sign dated from the mid 1920s so it was coming on for 100 years old. It took me back to the era when people would bother to get a pen repaired, whereas everything today has an element of planned obsolescence built in. Everything now has an expiry date."
"That was the start, and after seeing that first one you become conscious of their presence and you notice them everywhere. They keep popping up in all different locations. Before long I had around 10 and then emailed friends and family to ask for help. The catalyst was the incredible response.
"Everybody wrote back telling me of signs they knew about
- their local signs that they either remembered on their way to and from school or visiting grandparents. They just seem to have a lot of personal significance to people, and many had noticed them before, whether consciously or not."