As part of London Design Festival 2024.
Ghostsigns are advertisements for products or companies that are no longer available today, yet they still cling to the walls above and along today’s streets offering a window into the past. The signs can be hand-painted onto walls, carved into wood, incised into the fabric of a building or forged in metal.
Take Courage and ‘Commit No Nuisance’ as you discover letterforms of various shapes, types, forms and sizes in the backstreets of Southwark between Blackfriars Road and Borough Market.
See how sign makers of old had their own styles and how they created and applied their designs. Hear the fascinating stories about the companies advertised, with products as varied as hops and shops, boxing and boxes, tea and textiles, lightwells and linctus, churches and chocolate. See the site of one of the largest breweries in the country, hear how one company grew rapidly to become a kind of B&Q of its day, and how another created security systems that changed the banking world.
We’ll also say hello to a dog that Dickens knew and consider a few enigmas along the way in the form of signage that ought to belong elsewhere and examples recently-created pastiches.
The tour lasts approx two hours and ends a few minutes’ walk from London Bridge station.
Jane Parker is a qualified London guide, a typographer, designer and keen photographer. For many decades she has been ‘collecting’ and researching London’s oven-overlooked details.
