A very-well-maintained vintage metal/neon hand-lettered sign. It looks almost brand new. This sign has been in continuous use since the 1940s. Seen in Beloit, Wisconsin on August 8, 2004.

Detail from the cover of a book of American history and Bible stories published in 1890 in Chicago for Norwegian immigrants. My grandmother owned this when she was a child, and probably got it second-hand. If you look closely, you can see that some of the letters have been filled in with a pencil.

Packaging label seen in an antique store in Hixton, Wisconsin on July 29, 2004.

UK reader Aled Williams sent me this photo of a beautiful hand-painted sign on a hardware store in Bristol. Just lovely.

Update (7/12/08): More photos from the same neighborhood by Jon Tan on Flickr.

Appropriately enough for the end of the year, the Movie Title Stills Collection now has a set of “The End” titles from Warner Bros. movies, from 1925 (the earliest available on DVD) to 1967 (when the practice ended). As usual, these are nearly all hand lettered. There is some consistency to the designs, almost as if it were treated as logos. This may have been done on purpose, as a way of branding the pictures, but it seems more likely that is was simple expediency, reusing the same artwork to save time and money, with variations reflecting the shifting tastes over time of the artists involved.

A couple of weekends ago, I attended the “Back to the Fifties” car show in St. Paul. This was the first time for me, despite the fact that we live within walking distance of the Minnesota State Fair Grounds, where the show takes place every year. Since the cars are always cruising around our neighborhood when the event is held, we never felt a pressing need to pay the admission fee. But this year, I decided to get a closer look.

I was glad I brought my camera. I realized what a great opportunity it was to snap photos of car nameplates—the stylized chrome lettering that adorns automobiles. The Fifties was an especially inventive period for “brightwork,” as it is called. For practical reasons, script styles were most often used—it meant that the nameplate could be molded in a single piece of metal. It was a treasure trove.

Here are some gems that I found:

July 9 Update: I just posted these photos (and a few more) on Flickr where you can see them a bit larger.