Eye-catching Enamel

Angeline Wilcox celebrates a weather-resistant and long-lasting advertiser's dream

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Everyone knows that there is an art to advertising. All businesses depend on it as a way of generating sales, creating demand, promoting their brand and highlighting their products and services. No doubt the success of an advertising campaign is determined by a product's sales figures, but it's fascinating to discover the adverts that still engage with people many years after they were first launched.

Today, of course, we are bombarded by an incredible array of adverts from all forms of media: television, online, radio, print, cinema, social media and not forgetting the huge LED screens that dazzle high above London's Piccadilly Circus. However, there was a time when advertising had more charm and a gentler appeal, but it was just as eye-catching and effective.

From the end of the 19th to the mid-20th century, enamel advertising signs were a familiar sight across the country, appearing on corner shop walls, railway station platforms and garage forecourts. Even public transport, such as omnibuses and trams, displayed them. These colourful shiny standards featured every conceivable product from chocolate to cigarettes, medicines to mustard and starch to soap.

The signs were made using vitreous enamel and involved fusing different coloured layers of powdered glass on to rolled iron — although steel was later used at very high temperatures. Lettering and designs were hand stencilled, and The individual colours had to be fired separately. The intricate skills and expensive production techniques created a vibrant aspect of street furniture, which today chronicles our commercial, industrial and social heritage.