The History of Signboards

An excerpt of a review from "The Fortnightly Review, " Volume 4: THE history of signboards is an episode in the history of Advertising. The progress of distinctive trade titles and emblems marks the progress of competition. If we could trace signs to their origin, we should probably find them nearly coeval with the formation of the earliest working communities. The Greeks had them. The Bush, which good wine is said never to need, comes down to us from the Romans. Signs followed the historical course of the arts by which they were produced. At first they were sculptured on the fronts of houses, as may be seen amongst the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii; they next took the form of mural paintings, examples of which still survive in the old Italian cities; and finally they grew into independent pictures, swung out in frames. In this advance from the quiet terra-cotta relievo, or the colourless bit of stone cutting sunk in the wall, to the conspicuous board swinging in the wind, the onward struggle for publicity is pretty clearly indicated. The earliest signs appear to have been selected with a view to advertise the passer-by of the trades and handicrafts they represented. The object was to make known the business of the house, or shop, and the most obvious expedient for the accomplishment of that end was a symbol drawn from the occupation itself. Thus, the gravedigger put out a pickaxe and lamp, the physician had his cupping glass, two slaves carrying an amphora represented a Pompeian public-house, a bunch of grapes was carved over the lintel of a wine shop, and a schoolmaster announced his calling by the figure of a boy undergoing the operation of a birching. In later times, signs, like all other usages, took the complexion of the age, and wandering into wider regions of fancy as rivalry pressed upon invention, they ultimately lost their distinguishing characteristics altogether. The incongruities generated in this way involve the most egregious absurdities. The old affinity between the sign and the calling came to be wholly disregarded, and the sign itself, which at first had some meaning in it, degenerated into an unintelligible masquerade. All the kingdoms of nature have at last come to be exhausted in the pursuit of emblems that are not emblematic, and no subject is too lofty or too mean for the easel of the sign-painter. Not only is the sign in most cases foreign to the occupation, but it is frequently a puzzle to the wayside comprehension. When we shall have discovered the relation of a beer-shop to the Battle of Waterloo, we may hope to penetrate the mystery of the Whistling Oyster, or the Three Coffins and Sugarloaf. Yet notwithstanding the anomalies and eccentricities by which we are beset in the retrospect, broad lights fall here and there which distinctly reveal the passing influence of manners and events. The Crown and Rasp, for instance, over a tobacconist's shop evidently belongs to the primitive ago of snuff-taking, when the titillating dust was produced by scraping the tobacco-root with a rasp, which snuff-takers carried in their pockets for the purpose; the Jerusalem and similar signs, carry us back to the days of the Crusades; successive periods of naval enterprise are distinguished by the heads of admirals and explorers, the Benbows, the Raleighs, and the Nelsons; memorable incidents are noted in such signs as the Royal Oak and the South Sea Arms; mediaeval times are represented by the saints, under whoso protection certain trades and fabrics were placed; and to the religious booksellers immediately following the Reformation we may confidently refer the origin of such signs as the Bible, the Three Bibles, the Bible and Crown, and others of a kindred description. A work which should track the stream of these pictorial memorials from the source downwards would form a curious and valuable contribution to the history of the people....