African Barbershop Sign

アフリカの理髪店看板 / 1950s– / Style / Signage and Display

The hand-painted signboards of West African barbershops: numbered haircut samples in a grid, flat repeated faces sitting between product catalogue and portraiture.

African Barbershop Sign — AI-generated interpretation 1
AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work
African Barbershop Sign — Sign of the LEO COIFFURE barbershop in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (National Museum of Ethnology, collected 2005) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · © Yanajin33
Sign of the LEO COIFFURE barbershop in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (National Museum of Ethnology, collected 2005) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · © Yanajin33
African Barbershop Sign — Barbershop in Yaoundé, Cameroon, exterior wall painted with hairstyle samples 2007, photo Elin — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
Barbershop in Yaoundé, Cameroon, exterior wall painted with hairstyle samples 2007, photo Elin — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0

At a glance

Visual cues

  • Grids of haircut samples
  • Flat repeated faces
  • Numbers and hand lettering
  • Enamel on plywood

Best used for

  • Showing the choices in pictures for customers who cannot read the text
  • Shopfront signage hand painted to survive sun and rain

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Dictionary entry

Type
Number each cut and paint only the shop name large by hand
Composition
Grid of equal frames with every face drawn at the same angle
Material
Enamel on plywood, few colors, black outlines holding it together
Caution
Individualizing the faces as portraits breaks the catalogue function, and customers can no longer use the board to order.
Further study
sign painters of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire / the wordplay of haircut names / collecting versus local use

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https://indexstyle.org/styles/barbershop-sign
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