Thursday, December 28, 2006

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Church Street detail 2


And this is who did it. Charles Barrett (Shopfitters) Ltd, 113 Camberwell New Road. I'll do some digging and see if I can find out who he is (there is a single mention of a Mr Charles Barrett of this address in an undated piece on the web, drawn from old newspaper clippings - but there'll be more than that somewhere...)

Church Street detail 1

Note especially the balls at the base of the J, the bottom of the S and the C; and the ledge separating the descender of the J from its bowl. The balls are slightly unwieldy, I think (to my untrained eye, the C looks too close to a G for comfort, and the S the wrong way up. Doesn't stop it being beautiful, though, and the claret/gold colour combination is very grand.

Church Street, London NW8


Apologies for the angle - there's an inconvenient road sign dead ahead of this. Original - the second detail image shows the name of the signwriters. The shop, like so many in Church Street, now sells antiques.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Shop Front, Roman Road, London E2

Well, here's satisfying. In a street of shop signs made of self-adhesive letters, neon signs and bad typography, here's a silver-on-black, probably 1920's(?) sign that's somehow survived - perhaps simply because it's beautiful.

They've even kerned the name, but not the numbers. There's attention to detail.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Telephone box, Millbank

A clear typographer's eye in the layout - hardly surprising since (now I'm home and can do some research) it's a variant of the K6 box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and originally rolled out in 1936. It was blowing a gale when I took this, hence the slight shake on the image...