Brilliant Nugget shoe polish sign on an old shop window in Middle Park

Drove by this on Canterbury Road the other day. What a beauty - and great that it's been kept:

This find reminded me of my earlier encounter with the remnants of a Nugget sign in Carlton that had been photographed years before by ghost sign aficionado John Hunter: http://findingtheradiobook.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/a-nugget-shoe-polish-sign-old-photo-and.html

Highett staples: Velvet Soap, Robur Tea and house paint

Today I was driving on Highett Road near the Highett Railway Station. I saw a glimpse of a painted paintbrush on a fascia, decided to give it a miss, then saw a European cake shop. Hmmm. Lunchtime. Worth a look then.

So I parked, got some food and walked down the street. Lucky I did - walking back the other way I stumbled on a palimpsest of signs that includes a Velvet Soap sign with a cartoon figure painted over the top:

I saw the sign from a small square across the road. There was something on the wall there too. I took a closer look - and realised it was the R and O from a large Robur Tea sign:

 

The paint shop fascia was there too, but hard to photograph from the other side of the busy road:

Elephant found in deliberate Collingwood uncovering

The other day I was on Smith Street Collingwood. On a corner is a motor garage that's been there forever - these days it looks like it's run by people who are also motoring history enthusiasts. The place was open and the walls were covered in old enamel signs for petrol and oil. People were sitting around the workshop, so I felt odd about taking photos.

A few days earlier, though, I'd been there when the place was closed. The whitewashed walls have been partly stripped back, presumably by the enthusiast owners, to reveal a bunch of old painted signs, including a big one for Elephant Kerosene, a former brand of both the Esso and Standard-Vacuum oil companies:

Elephant brand kerosene used to be a popular one in the early to mid 20th century:

Looking up close, and lots of other details revealed themselves, including the old phone number dating from the 1950s: