Chocolat Menier, Saint-Dizant-du-Bois

Since today is Easter Sunday, this ghost sign for some chocolate seems quite appropriate.

Founded in 1816 by Antoine Brutus Menier, Menier was France's leading chocolate manufacturer until the mid-20th century. The firm, which remained controlled by the Menier family until 1960, is now owned by Swiss giant Nestlé.

For more information about the company, you can check the wikipedia page. La saga Menier is a great website (in French) dedicated to the history of the company and its products, and includes lots of documents, advertisements, objects, etc.

Chocolat
Menier

Location: D 137, lieu-dit Le Pérou, Saint-Dizant-du-Bois, Charente-Maritime / Pictures taken in May 2012

Atlantic, Belluire

As it could be seen on the first picture from yesterday's post, there is more to this wall in the tiny village of Belluire than just a ghost sign for a Shell petrol station.

Indeed another well-preserved ghost sign for the Atlantic washing machines covers the lower part of this wall. These were produced between 1955 and 1969 (for more information, please see an earlier post about an Igol / Atlantic palimpsest).

The slogan "La machine à bien laver" can barely be seen, stuck between the black background stripe of Atlantic and the frame of an earlier painted sign now covered by the one for Shell.

La machine à bien laver
Atlantic

This ghost sign was painted between 1966 and 1969 as the drawing of the washing machine corresponds to models Atlantic launched in 1966 and 1967. Before 1966 the design of the raised vertical part with the control dials was slightly different, the shorter rectangle being on the right, not on the left.

Location: D 137, Belluire, Charente-Maritime / Pictures taken in May 2012

Shell, Belluire

As an introduction to a series of ghost signs found along the former Nationale 137 (reclassified as Départementale in 2006) in the départments of Charente-Maritime and Gironde in southwestern France, what could be better than one for a petrol station, where we could refill in order to carry on and discover more ghost signs.

As it is often the case with signs for petrol stations, it is located a few kilometres away from the petrol pumps themselves ¹. In this case one had to drive for another five kilometres before reaching Shell's forecourt in Saint-Genis-de-Saintonge.

This particular design for the Shell logo, with the yellow shell on a red square rather than with a red outline only, was used between 1961 and 1971.

Nowadays there is still a petrol station about five kilometres further south but it is part of the network of one of Shell's competitors, Total.

This ghost sign was painted over an earlier, and wider, one with a white background but it is not possible to tell what was advertised there.

1: for another example, click see another here.

Location: D 137, Belluire, Charente-Maritime / Pictures taken in 2012

Golden Cuckoo, Bagan

Bagan, on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River in central Myanmar, is one of the most extraordinary archeological sites in Asia. The area is also well-known for its lacquerware. Actually a lot of lacquer objects sold in neighbouring countries come from Myanmar, and mainly from Bagan. The main production centre in the region is the small village of Myinkaba between Old Bagan and New Bagan. Dozens of workshops can be found between centuries-old temples and stupas.



While a fair share of the lacquerware sold to tourists will be of low quality, with a bamboo-only frame and around seven to ten layers of lacquer, some of the workshops in Myinkaba, including the family-run Golden Cuckoo, also produce good quality articles with sixteen to twenty layers of lacquer. These are made of fine pieces of bamboo tied together with horse or donkey hair and can take months to produce. Indeed each coat of lacquer must be allowed to dry before it is sanded down with ash from rice husk and the next layer can be applied. Depending on the season and consequently the degree of humidity, this can take between five and ten days per layer. Therefore it is wrong to expect high quality lacquerware to be cheap, even if the price quoted first can usually be brought down during a good-humoured haggling.


U Tin Htun + Daw Aye Aye
Golden Cuckoo
Family Lacquer-ware
Workshop
Myinkaba (Sein Gone Quarter)
Location: Bagan - Chauk Road, Myinkaba Village, Bagan / Pictures taken in January 2013

Oil colour, Stratford

With only a handful of words still legible and an online search that did not return any noteworthy result, I have not found which stores and which brands of paint were mentioned on this ghost sign.

...
...
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Lane
Oil
Colour
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Stores

Location: Ham Park Road / Picture taken in May 2011

Blumen und Sämereien, Bautzen

Compared to the ghost signs for Kutschke the master roofer and Ullrich the tailor also found in Bautzen, in eastern Saxony, the one for this flower and seed shop is extremely simple. It is also much more recent as it was probably painted in the 1970s or 1980s.

Blumen u. Sämereien
[Flowers & Seeds] Location: Rosenstraße, Bautzen, Sachsen / Pictures taken in October 2011

Smithfield Garage, Birmingham

The former Smithfield Garage in Digbeth, an industrial district immediately to the east of Birmingham centre, has a date of 1923 above one of its entrances. According to Andy Foster, author of the Pevsner Architectural Guides. Birmingham, it was built by Harry Weedon, an architect best known for his Art Deco factories and the Odeon cinemas.

While the entrance above has a nice sign with raised letters made of cement, one has to look to the adjacent part of the building to find a long and colourful ghost sign painted on wood.

In the early 1960s Rover cars were available from Smithfield Garage Limited. However it is as a car dealer for Volkswagen / Audi and BMW, between the 1960s and the late 20th century, that Smithfield is essentially remembered. By then Smithfield had been taken over by Hartwell and the official name changed to Hartwell Smithfield.

Smithfield Garage Limited

This building may not be standing for much longer. Indeed redevelopment projects in the Digbeth area may have been put on hold because of the current economic crisis, but plans have already been approved and many former industrial buildings are bound to disappear sooner or later.

Given the length of this sign and the narrowness of the street, several pictures have been stitched to create the complete front view of the ghost sign below.

Location: Meriden Street / Pictures taken in May 2012