Ghost Signs vs Victorian Ornament
ゴーストサイン / ヴィクトリアン装飾
Ghost Signs comes from Signage and Display and Victorian Ornament from Ornament. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Ghost Signs
Hand-painted brick-wall advertisements faded by weather. The lettering of the craftsmen called wall dogs, through peeling and fading, is being rediscovered as a stratum of urban memory.
Victorian Ornament
Builds a thickly layered system of ornament from many revival styles and the riches of industrial printing.
| Ghost Signs | Victorian Ornament | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1880s–1950s / rediscovery | 1837–1901 |
| Family | Signage and Display | Ornament |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Paint applied straight to brick / Fading and peeling / Craftsman lettering / Layers of overpainting | Dense borders / Symmetry / Botanical pattern / Chromolithography |
| Best used for | Treating the traces on an existing wall as design in a renovation · Painting a new sign on an old building with the texture of accumulated time | Giving packages and invitations the dignity of a collection · Making the act of studying detail the value itself |
| Type | Redraw period shop lettering by hand, with shadowed letters and ornament rules | Ornamented serifs and small capitals |
| Composition | Do not dodge joints or openings, aligning letters to the brick coursing | Fix a central axis; nest frames, headings and text |
| Material | Brushed straight onto brick, assuming the least stable colors fade first | Deep red, green, gold, cream; repeat hairlines in steps |
| Caution | Applying an even wash of distress falsifies the direction of fading and the order of overpainting, and the intended age reads as fake. | Never mix other cultures' patterns as anonymous ornament. Research origins; quote precisely. |