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:

Hello 2016: ghost sign book in production, upcoming talk at State Library of Victoria, 40,000 page views and lots of ghost sign pics to follow soon

Happy new year! It's been nearly two months since I posted on this blog - there's been lots on.

Firstly, our forthcoming edited academic book on ghost signs has consumed much of my time of late. It's finally about to go into production - will let you know when it's out. It will have 22 chapters about ghost signs from around the world, by a range of academics and practitioners. I'm very proud of it. Some initial details are here: http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9781138934689/

Secondly, I'll soon be doing a talk at the State Library of Victoria on the Lewis and Skinner archive. Details are here: http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/creative-conversations-lewis-skinner-signwriting-archive. Unfortunately it's now booked out - but drop me a line if you'd like to go and I'll see if I can get you in.

Thirdly, this blog has now generated 40,000 unique page views, which is very nice. Thanks for reading!

And lastly - I've accumulated a large backlog of ghost sign pics over the last months and will start posting these shortly. Stay tuned...

A few on the run in Sydney

Today I took a lightning five-hour visit to central Sydney for work. But even in that short time, a few ghost signs reared their heads.

I snapped the first one in the city near Wynyard station on the way to our meeting.

The other three were taken by colleague Dale from the train back to the airport (Dale had the better phone camera):

 

Hiding away in the Melbourne CBD

It's been a little while since I've been able to post some sign pics - and there are plenty to post. So might as well get started. Here are a few I took yesterday that popped up unexpectedly when I was walking through the Melbourne CBD's south-west, around Highlander Lane:

 

 

Further down, there was this, on Rutherglen House - one of the city's original residences (1842), and host of a colourful recent life: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/city-address-often-visited-by-powerbrokers-and-celebrities-20130304-2fgzk.html

The sign says (something) House - but obviously not when it was called 'Rutherglen':

Then around the corner, the entrance to the old sewerage works:

Up above: not a ghost sign but a fascinating late Victorian urban sanitation innovation - 5-storey urinals at the back of the Rialto Centre. Ironically, one of the state-of the-then-art building's first tenants was the Metropolitan Board of Works, who ran the city's sewerage system. More here: http://www.onmydoorstep.com.au/heritage-listing/743/rialto-building

And lastly, to finish off, a sign I'd previously missed on Elizabeth Street:

Latest interview with yours truly - this time on ghost signs in Adelaide

Here's the link - has some nice pics as well.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/special-features/adelaides-fading-brick-signs/story-fnmp5xnf-1227547614913

And here's a link to a PDF of the story if you're not able to access the online version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xamrkd1bblns9ak/Adelaidenowinterview2015.pdf?dl=0